Sri Aurobindo: A sudden descent of this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efﬁcacy is a well-known phenomenon of spiritual experience.  Or again one may start a mental process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and yet may pull down or be seized midway, or even at the outset, by an overmind inﬂux, a rapid intervention or manifestation of the higher Silence, with an effect sudden, instantaneous, out of all proportion to the means used at the beginning. One commences with a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, by a response from That to which one aspires or by an irruption of the inﬁnitudes of the Spirit. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had the actual experience.  I have never said that things (in life) are harmonious now — on the contrary, with the human consciousness as it is harmony is impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: It is always what I have told you, that the human consciousness is defective and simply impossible — and that is why I strive for a higher consciousness to come and set right the disturbed balance. I am glad you are getting converted to silence, and even Nirvana is not without its uses — in my case it was the ﬁrst positive spiritual experience and it made possible all the rest of the sadhana; but as to the positive way to get these things, I don’t know if your mind is quite ready to proceed with it. There are in fact several ways. My own way was by rejection of thought. “Sit down,” I was told, “look and you will see that your thoughts come into you from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: Before they enter, ﬂing them back.” I sat down and looked and saw to my astonishment that it was so; I saw and felt concretely the thought approaching as if to enter through or above the head and was able to push it back concretely before it came inside.  In three days — really in one — my mind became full of an eternal silence — it is still there. But that I don’t know how many people can do. One (not a disciple — I had no disciples in those days) asked me how to do Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: I said: “Make your mind quiet ﬁrst.” He did and his mind became quite silent and empty. Then he rushed to me saying: “My brain is empty of thoughts, I cannot think. I am becoming an idiot.” He did not pause to look and see where these thoughts he uttered were coming from!


Sri Aurobindo: Nor did he realise that one who is already an idiot cannot become one.  Anyhow I was not patient in those days and I dropped him and let him lose his miraculously achieved silence.  The usual way, the easiest if one can manage it at all, is to  the silence from above you into the brain, mind and body.    About Nirvana: When I wrote in the, I was setting forth an overmind view of things to the mind and putting it in mental terms, that was why I had sometimes to use logic.


Sri Aurobindo: For in such a work — mediating between the intellect and the supra-intellectual — logic has a place, though it cannot have the chief place it occupies in purely mental philosophies. The Mayavadin himself labours to establish his point of view or his experience by a rigorous logical reasoning. Only, when it comes to an explanation of Maya he, like the scientist dealing with Nature, can do no more than arrange and organise his ideas of the process of this universal mystiﬁcation; he cannot explain how or why his illusionary mystifying Maya came into existence. He can only say, “Well, but it is there.”  Of course, it is there.


Sri Aurobindo: But the question is, ﬁrst, “What is it? is it really an illusionary Power and nothing else, or is the Mayavadin’s idea of it a mistaken ﬁrst view, a mental imperfect reading, even perhaps itself an illusion?” And next, “Is illusion the sole or the highest Power which the Divine Consciousness or Superconsciousness possesses?” The Absolute is an absolute Truth free from Maya, otherwise liberation would not be possible. Has then the supreme and absolute Truth no other active Power than a power of falsehood and with it, no doubt, for the two go together, a power of dissolving or disowning the falsehood, — which is yet there for ever?


Sri Aurobindo: I suggested that this sounded a little queer. But queer or not, if it is so, it is so — for as you point out, the Ineffable cannot be subjected to the laws of logic.  But who is to decide whether it is so? You will say, those who get there. But get where?


Sri Aurobindo: To the Perfect and the Highest, . Is the Mayavadin’s featureless Brahman that Perfect, that Complete — is it the very Highest? Is there not or can there not be a higher than that highest,? That is not a question of logic, it is a question of spiritual fact, of a supreme and complete experience. The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience — an experience which must of course include or have passed through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would not be complete and would have no decisive value.


Sri Aurobindo: Now to reach Nirvana was the ﬁrst radical result of my own Yoga. It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world — only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something glimpsed somewhere above, — no abstraction — it was positive, the only positive reality — although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather ﬂooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial. I cannot say there was anything exhilarating or rapturous in the experience, as it then came to me, — the ineffable Ananda I had years afterwards, — but what it brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence, an inﬁnity of release and freedom.


Sri Aurobindo: I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all, and the inner heart of experience, a constant memory of it and its power to return remained until in the end it began to disappear into a greater Superconsciousness from above. But meanwhile realisation added itself to realisation and fused itself with this original experience. At an early stage the aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at ﬁrst only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth; it was the spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence, the freedom in Inﬁnity remained always with the world or all worlds only as a continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.  Now that is the whole trouble in my approach to Mayavada.


Sri Aurobindo: Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realisation, a ﬁrst step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating ﬁnale. It came unasked, unsought for, though quite welcome. I had no least idea about it before, no aspiration towards it, in fact my aspiration was towards just the opposite, spiritual power to help the world and do my work in it, yet it came — without even a “May I come in” or a “By your leave”. It just happened and settled in as if for all eternity or as if it had been really there always. And then it slowly grew into something not less but greater than its ﬁrst self!


Sri Aurobindo: How then could I accept Mayavada or persuade myself to pit against the Truth imposed on me from above the logic of Shankara?  But I do not insist on everybody passing through my experience or following the Truth that is its consequence. I have no objection to anybody accepting Mayavada as his soul’s truth or his mind’s truth or their way out of the cosmic difﬁculty. I object to it only if somebody tries to push it down my throat or the world’s throat as the sole possible, satisfying and allcomprehensive explanation of things. For it is not that at all.


Sri Aurobindo: There are many other possible explanations; it is not at all satisfactory, for in the end it explains nothing; and it is — and must be unless it departs from its own logic — all-exclusive, not in the least all-comprehensive. But that does not matter. A theory may be wrong or at least one-sided and imperfect and yet extremely practical and useful. That has been amply shown by the history of science.


Sri Aurobindo: In fact a theory whether philosophical or scientiﬁc is nothing else than a support for the mind, a practical device to help it to deal with its object, a staff to uphold it and make it walk more conﬁdently and get along on its difﬁcult journey. The very exclusiveness and one-sidedness of the Mayavada make it a strong staff or a forceful stimulus for a spiritual endeavour which means to be one-sided, radical and exclusive. It supports the effort of the Mind to get away from itself and from Life by a short cut into superconscience. Or rather it is the Purusha in Mind that wants to get away from the limitations of Mind and Life into the superconscient Inﬁnite. Theoretically, the most radical way for that is for the mind to deny all its perceptions and all the preoccupations of the vital and see and treat them as illusions.


Sri Aurobindo: Practically, when the mind draws back from itself, it enters easily into a relationless peace in which nothing matters — for in its absoluteness there are no mental or vital values — and from which the mind can rapidly move towards that great short cut to the Superconscient, mindless trance, . In proportion to the thoroughness of that movement all the perceptions it had once accepted become unreal to it — illusion, Maya. It is on its road towards immergence.  Mayavada, therefore, with its sole stress on Nirvana, quite apart from its defects as a mental theory of things, serves a great spiritual end and, as a path, can lead very high and far.


Sri Aurobindo: Even, if the Mind were the last word and there were nothing beyond it except the pure Spirit, I would not be averse to accepting it as the only way out. For what the mind with its perceptions and the vital with its desires have made of life in this world, is a very bad mess, and if there were nothing better to be hoped for, the shortest cut to an exit would be the best. But my experience is that there is something beyond Mind; Mind is not the last word here of the Spirit. Mind is an ignorance-consciousness and its perceptions cannot be anything else than either false, mixed or imperfect — even when “true”, a partial reﬂection of the Truth and not the very body of Truth herself. But there is a TruthConsciousness, not static only and self-introspective, but also dynamic and creative, and I prefer to get at that and see what it says about things and can do rather than take the short cut away from things offered as its own end by the Ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not think . . . that the statement of supra-intellectual things necessarily involves a making of distinctions in the terms of the intellect. For, fundamentally, it is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it.


Sri Aurobindo: This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness and not a thought or formulated idea. For instance, my ﬁrst major experience — radical and overwhelming, though not, as it turned out, ﬁnal and exhaustive — came after and by the exclusion and silencing of all thought — there was, ﬁrst, what might be called a spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of stillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality in whose presence things existed only as forms but forms not at all substantial or real or concrete; but this was all apparent to a spiritual perception and essential and impersonal sense and there was not the least concept or idea of reality or unreality or any other notion, for all concept or idea was hushed or rather entirely absent in the absolute stillness. These things were known directly through the pure consciousness and not through the mind, so there was no need of concepts or words or names. At the same time this fundamental character of spiritual experience is not absolutely limitative; it can do without thought, but it can do with thought also. Of course, the ﬁrst idea of the mind would be that the resort to thought brings one back at once to the domain of the intellect — and at ﬁrst and for a long time it may be so; but it is not my experience that this is unavoidable.


Sri Aurobindo: It happens so when one tries to make an intellectual statement of what one has experienced; but there is another kind of thought that springs out as if it were a body or form of the experience or of the consciousness involved in it — or of a part of that consciousness — and this does not seem to me to be intellectual in its character. It has another light, another power in it, a sense within the sense. It is very clearly so with those thoughts that come without the need of words to embody them, thoughts that are of the nature of a direct seeing in the consciousness, even a kind of intimate sense or contact formulating itself into a precise expression of its awareness (I hope this is not too mystic or unintelligible); but it might be said that directly the thoughts turn into words they belong to the kingdom of intellect — for words are a coinage of the intellect. But is it so really or inevitably? It has always seemed to me that words came originally from somewhere else than the thinking mind, although the thinking mind secured hold of them, turned them to its use and coined them freely for its purposes.


Sri Aurobindo: But even otherwise, is it not possible to use words for the expression of something that is not intellectual? Housman contends that poetry is perfectly poetical only when it is nonintellectual, when it is nonsense. That is too paradoxical, but I suppose what he means is that if it is put to the strict test of the intellect, it appears extravagant because it conveys something that expresses and is real to some other kind of seeing than that which intellectual thought brings to us. Is it not possible that words may spring from, that language may be used to express — at least up to a certain point and in a certain way — the supra-intellectual consciousness which is the essential power of spiritual experience? This however is by the way — when one tries to explain spiritual experience to the intellect itself, then it is a different matter.


Sri Aurobindo:   You ask me whether you have to give up your predilection for testing before accepting and to accept everything in Yoga — and by testing you mean testing by the ordinary reason. The only answer I can give to that is that the experiences of Yoga belong to an inner domain and go according to a law of their own, have their own method of perception, criteria and all the rest of it which are neither those of the domain of the physical senses nor of the domain of rational or scientiﬁc enquiry. Just as scientiﬁc enquiry passes beyond that of the physical senses and enters the domain of the inﬁnite and the inﬁnitesimal about which the senses can say nothing and test nothing — for one cannot see or touch an electron or know by the evidence of the sense-mind whether it exists or not or decide by that evidence whether the earth really turns round the sun and not rather the sun round the earth as our senses and all our physical experience daily tell us — so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientiﬁc or rational enquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature.  As in science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience following faithfully the methods laid down by the Guru or by the systems of the past, you have to develop an intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what ﬁeld each is valid, what is the place of each in the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at ﬁrst sight seem to contradict it, etc. etc. until you can move with a secure knowledge in the vast ﬁeld of spiritual phenomena.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the only way to test spiritual experience.  I have myself tried the other method and found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself — as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual stature — you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in science you accept a teacher instead of going through the whole ﬁeld of science and its experimentation all by yourself — at least until you have accumulated sufﬁcient experience and knowledge. If that is accepting things, well, you have to accept. For I am unable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the judge of what is beyond it.


Sri Aurobindo: You quote the sayings of Vivekananda and Kobiraj Gopinath. Is this Kaviraj the disciple of the Jewel Sannyasi or is he another? In any case, I would like to know before assigning a value to these utterances what they actually did for the testing of their spiritual perceptions and experiences. How did Vivekananda test the value of his spiritual experiences — some of them not more credible to the ordinary mind than the translation through the air of Bijoy Goswami’s wife to Lake Manas or of Bijoy Goswami himself by a similar method to Benares? I know nothing of Kobiraj Gopinath, but what were his tests and how did he apply them?


Sri Aurobindo: What were his methods? his criteria? It seems to me that no ordinary mind could accept the apparition of Buddha out of a wall or the half hour’s talk with Hayagriva as valid facts by any kind of testing. It would either have to accept them or on the sole evidence of Vivekananda which comes to the same thing or to reject them as hallucinations or mere mental images accompanied in one case by an auditive hallucination. I fail to see how it could “test” them.


Sri Aurobindo: Or how was I to test by the ordinary mind my experience of Nirvana? To what conclusion could I come about it by the aid of the ordinary positive reason? How could I test its validity? I am at a loss to imagine. I did the only thing I could, — to accept it as a strong and valid truth of experience, let it have its full play and produce its full experiential consequences until I had sufﬁcient Yogic knowledge to put it in its place.


Sri Aurobindo: Finally, how without inner knowledge or experience can you or anyone else test the inner knowledge and experience of others?    One may be aware of the silent static self without relation to the play of the cosmos. Again, one may be aware of the universal static self omnipresent in everything without being supra-sensuously awake to the movement of the dynamic . The ﬁrst realisation of the Self or Brahman is often a realisation of something that separates itself from all form, name, action, movement, exists in itself only, regarding the cosmos as only a mass of cinematographic shapes unsubstantial and empty of reality.


Sri Aurobindo: That was my own ﬁrst complete realisation of the Nirvana in the Self. That does not mean a wall between Self and Brahman, but a scission between the essential self-existence and the manifested world.    That has nothing to do with love. Realisation of Self and love of the personal Divine are two different movements.


Sri Aurobindo: My struggle has never been about the Self. All that is perfectly irrelevant to the question which concerns the Bhakta’s love for the Divine.  There was nothing sugary about it at all. And I had no need to have any memory of it, because it was with me for months and years and is there now though in fusion with other realisations.  My point is that there have been hundreds of Bhaktas who have the love and seeking without any concrete experience, with only a mental conception or emotional belief in the Divine to support them.


Sri Aurobindo: The whole point is that it is untrue to say that one must have a decisive or concrete experience before one can have love for the Divine. It is contrary to the facts and the quite ordinary facts of the spiritual experience.   I quite agree with you in not relishing the idea of another attack of this nature. I am myself, I suppose, more a hero by necessity than by choice — I do not love storms and battles — at least on the subtle plane. The sunlit way may be an illusion, though I do not think it is — for I have seen people treading it for years; but a way with only natural or even only moderate ﬁts of rough weather, a way without typhoons surely is possible — there are so many examples.


Sri Aurobindo: may be generally true and certainly the path of laya or nirvana is difﬁcult in the extreme to most (although in my case I walked into nirvana without intending it or rather nirvana walked casually into me not so far from the beginning of my Yogic career without asking my leave). But the path not be cut by periodical violent storms, though that it so for a great many is an obvious fact. But even for these, if they stick to it, I ﬁnd that after a certain point the storms diminish in force, frequency, duration. That is why I insisted so much on your sticking — for if you stick, the turningpoint is bound to come. I have seen some astonishing instances here recently of this typhonic periodicity beginning to fade out after years and years of violent recurrence.


Sri Aurobindo:  Never taught anything of the kind. I got the blessed Nirvana without even wanting it. Aspiration is ﬁrst or usual means, that is all.


Sri Aurobindo: I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman, etc. long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes; it came ﬁrst simply by an absolute stillness and blotting out as it were of all mental, emotional and other inner activities — the body continued indeed to see, walk, speak and do its other business but as an empty automatic machine and nothing more. I did not become aware of any pure “I” — nor even of any self, impersonal or other, — there was only an awareness of That as the sole Reality, all else being quite unsubstantial, void, non-real. As to what realised that Reality, it was a nameless consciousness which was not other than That; one could perhaps say this, though hardly even so much as this, since there was no mental concept of it, but no more. Neither was I aware of any lower soul or outer self called by such and such a personal name that was performing this feat of arriving at the consciousness of Nirvana. Well then, what becomes of your pure “I” and lower “I” in all that?


Sri Aurobindo: Consciousness (not this or that part of consciousness or an “I” of any kind) suddenly emptied itself of all inner contents and remained aware only of unreal surroundings and of Something real but ineffable. You may say that there must have been a consciousness aware of some perceiving existence, if not of a pure “I”, but, if so, it was something for which these names seem inadequate.     Sri Aurobindo has no remarks to make on Huxley’s comments with which he is in entire agreement.


Sri Aurobindo: But in the phrase “to its heights we can always reach” very obviously “we” does not refer to humanity in general but to those who have a sufﬁciently developed inner spiritual life. It is probable that Sri Aurobindo was thinking of his own experience. After three years of spiritual effort with only minor results he was shown by a Yogi the way to silence his mind. This he succeeded in doing entirely in two or three days by following the method shown. There was an entire silence of thought and feeling and all the ordinary movements of consciousness except the perception and recognition of things around without any accompanying concept or other reaction.


Sri Aurobindo: The sense of ego disappeared and the movements of the ordinary life as well as speech and action were carried on by some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception which remained saw all things as utterly unreal; this sense of unreality was overwhelming and universal. Only some undeﬁnable Reality was perceived as true which was beyond space and time and unconnected with any cosmic activity but yet was met wherever one turned. This condition remained unimpaired for several months and even when the sense of unreality disappeared and there was a return to participation in the world-consciousness, the inner peace and freedom which resulted from this realisation remained permanently behind all surface movements and the essence of the realisation itself was not lost. At the same time an experience intervened; something else than himself took up his dynamic activity and spoke and acted through him but without any personal thought or initiative.


Sri Aurobindo: What this was remained unknown until Sri Aurobindo came to realise the dynamic side of the Brahman, the Ishwara and felt himself moved by that in all his Sadhana and action. These realisations and others which followed upon them, such as that of the Self in all and all in the Self and all as the Self, the Divine in all and all in the Divine, are the heights to which Sri Aurobindo refers and to which he says we can always rise; for they presented to him no long or obstinate difﬁculty.  The only real difﬁculty which took decades of spiritual effort to carry out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels down to the subconscience and the basic Inconscience and up to the supreme Truth-consciousness or Supermind in which alone the dynamic transformation could be entirely integral and absolute.  That is a liberation, if completed. Since 1908 when I got the silence, I never think with my head or brain — it is always in the wideness generally above the head that the thoughts occur.


Sri Aurobindo:   When I got the emptiness, it lasted for years. Whatever else came, came in the emptiness and I could at any time withdraw from the activity into the pure silent peace.


Sri Aurobindo:   I had the sheer emptiness with nothing in it for many months together. It is not emptiness really — for there is no such thing as emptiness — but the pure experience of the Self. Your mind accustomed to all sorts of movements looks at it in a negative way, that is all.


Sri Aurobindo: It ought to be possible to read with the inner consciousness looking on and, as it were, seeing the act of reading. In the condition of absolute inner silence I was making speeches and conducting a newspaper, but all that got itself done without any thought entering my mind or the silence being in the least disturbed or diminished.    What you describe is not at all a drawing away of life-energy; it is simply the effect of voidness and stillness caused in the lower parts by the consciousness being located above. It is quite consistent with action, only one must get accustomed to the idea of the possibility of action under these conditions.


Sri Aurobindo: In a greater state of emptiness I carried on a daily newspaper and made a dozen speeches in the course of three or four days — but I did not manage that in any way; it happened. The Force made the body do the work without any inner activity.  The drawing of the life-energy leaves the body lifeless, helpless, empty and impotent, but it is attended by no experience except a great suffering and unease sometimes.   I never used it as a wall against anything. You seem to know more about my sadhana than I do.


Sri Aurobindo:   I believe I have as many hours of hard external work to do as almost anyone in the Asram and I am not aware that I have any leisure or spend even the very short time I have for concentration in a blissful quietism communing with the silent Brahman. Even my concentration is of the nature of action and it is not an airy quietistic contemplation as your informants seem to imagine.  I may add that I have not spent my life shouting down the quietistic ideal and sadhana without knowing why they followed it.


Sri Aurobindo: All the experiences that the quietistic sadhana can give, I have had, the realisation of the featureless Parabrahman, Maya, Sunya, the illusoriness of the world, the Akshara Purusha. I know also perfectly well why they turned away from the world and have gone through all the million difﬁculties which they did not care to face. None of the difﬁculties of which you enumerate one or two are strange to me — only I did not put the blame of them on anybody or on the Yoga and I overcame them.  Anybody can do the quietistic Yoga, who wants to do it. But if anyone imagines that they [] are easy and that these difﬁculties do not occur there or that the sadhakas of these paths are all of them perfected saints free from the human passions and defects which you see here among the sadhakas, he is labouring under a great delusion.


Sri Aurobindo: No path of Yoga is easy and to imagine that by leaving the world and plunging inside oneself one automatically shufﬂes off the vital and external nature is an illusion. If I ask you to develop equanimity and egolessness by work done with opening to the Divine, it is because it is so that I did it and it is so that it can best be done and not by retiring into oneself and shutting oneself away from all that can disturb equanimity and excite the ego. As for concentration and perfection of the being and the ﬁnding of the inner self, I did as much of it walking in the streets of Calcutta to my work or in dealing with men during my work as alone and in solitude.  As for divine rapture, a knock on head or foot or elsewhere be received with the physical Ananda of pain or pain + Ananda or pure physical Ananda — for I have often, quite involuntarily, made the experiment myself and passed with honours. It began, by the way, as far back as in Alipur jail when I got bitten in my cell by some very red and ferocious looking warrior ants and found to my surprise that pain and pleasure are conventions of our senses.


Sri Aurobindo: But I do not expect that unusual reaction from others. And I suppose there are limits, e.g. the case of a picketer in Madras or Dr. Noel Paton. In any case, this way of having rapture is better off the list and the Lilliputian doorway [ ] was not a happy contrivance.  There were other things but not at present tellable! You can put it like this.


Sri Aurobindo: “I take levitation as an acceptable idea, because I have had myself experience of the natural energies which if developed would bring it about and also physical experiences which would not have been possible if the principle of levitation were untrue.”  The capacity for it can come with the inner knowledge. E.g. I understood nothing about painting before I did Yoga. A moment’s illumination in Alipur jail opened my vision and since then I have understood with the intuitive perception and vision.  I do not know the technique of course but I can catch it at once if anybody with knowledge speaks of it.


Sri Aurobindo: That would have been impossible to me before.     Don’t be desperate about your incapacity as a connoisseur of painting. I was worse in this respect, knew something about sculpture, but blind to painting.


Sri Aurobindo: Suddenly one day in the Alipur jail, while meditating saw some “pictures” on the wall of the cell and lo and behold, the artistic eye in me opened and I knew all about painting except of course the more material side of the technique. I don’t always know how to express though, because I lack the knowledge of the proper expressions, but that does not stand in the way of a keen and understanding appreciation.  So, there you are. All things are possible.


Sri Aurobindo: No, not in the body. My contact with him was in the jail when he was speaking with me for about 15 days, giving me the ﬁrst insight into the Intuition plane (not the intuitive mind which is mental and not supramental) as the ﬁrst opening to Supermind.     Sri Aurobindo says that Vivekananda came to him not in a visible form but as a presence which was with him for a fortnight during which V. spoke certain things about the processes of the higher Truth-Consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not clear what your Guru meant by my sitting on the path; that could have been true of the period between 1915 and 1920 when I was writing the, but the sadhana and the work were waiting for the Mother’s coming. In 1923 or 1924 I could not be described as sitting on the path, so far as the sadhana was concerned, but it may perhaps be only a metaphor or symbol for the outward form of the work not yet being ready. The statement about my having gone too high to redescend for work in the world was made in almost the identical terms by another Yogi also; it referred to my condition at the time and cannot be taken as anything more.  Before the Mother came all were living in the mind with only some mental realisations and experiences. The vital and everything else were unregenerated and the psychic behind the veil.


Sri Aurobindo: I am not aware that anyone of them at that time entered the cosmic consciousness. At that time I was still seeking my way for the transformation and the passage to the supramental (all the part of the Yoga that goes beyond the ordinary Vedanta) and acted very much on a principle of with the few sadhaks who were there. is one of those who have never ceased regretting that — he regrets the vital liberty and absence of discipline they then had.   There is some truth in it — but the descent in 1926 was rather of the Overmind, not of the Supermind proper.


Sri Aurobindo: Rubbish! whose imagination was that?  Well, it is not quite the truth, but nearer to the mark.  There was never any mention of that from our side.  Well, I’m hanged.


Sri Aurobindo: You can’t know anything about a thing before you have “achieved” it?  Because I have seen it and am in contact with it, O logical baby that you are! But achieving it is another business.  Getting supramentalised is one thing and the achieved supramental is another.  Good Lord!


Sri Aurobindo: And what do these people think I meant when I was saying persistently that I was trying to get the supermind down into the material? If I had achieved it on Nov. 24. 1926, it would have been there already for the last nine years, isn’t it?  I am not aware of this gorgeous proclamation. What was said was that the Divine (Krishna or the Divine Presence or whatever you like) had come down into the material. It was also proclaimed that I was retiring — obviously to work things out.


Sri Aurobindo: If all that was achieved on the 24th [November] 1926, what on earth remained to work out, and if the Supramental was there, for what blazing purpose did I need to retire? Besides are these things achieved in a single day? If said anything like that she must have been in a prophetic mood and seen the future in the present!  I have stood, but I have not delivered. I had time for standing a moment, but none for a delivery — however pregnant my mind or my overmind may be.


Sri Aurobindo: But really what a logic! One must become thoroughly supramental ﬁrst (achieve supermind) and then only one can begin to know something about supermind?   Well! However if I have time one day, I will deliver — for evidently with such ideas about, an is highly advisable.


Sri Aurobindo:   Why not? Why can’t I be matter? or represent it at least? At least you will admit that I have got some matter in me and you will hardly deny that the matter in me is connected or even continuous (in spite of the quantum theory) with matter in general?


Sri Aurobindo: Well, if Krishna or the Overmind or something equivalent descended into my matter with an inevitable extension into connected general Matter, what is the lack of clarity in the statement of a descent into the material?    Krishna is not the supramental light. The descent of Krishna would mean the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually bringing, the descent of Supermind and Ananda. Krishna is the Anandamaya, he supports the evolution through the Overmind leading it towards his Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: No. I knew that long before.


Sri Aurobindo: It was the descent of Krishna into the physical.   It has nothing to do with immortality. It is the descent of Krishna.    What happened on the 24th November prepared the possibility of this descent and on that day he retired into seclusion and entered into deep and powerful meditation.


Sri Aurobindo: If it is the cat Bushy, she has some strange connection with the siddhi in the physical consciousness. It was she who ushered us into our present house running before us into each room. The change to this house marked the change from the sadhana on the vital to the sadhana on the physical level.  I never heard of this Vedic Goddess affair before. There was a time when the Mother was trying to bring down certain powers in the sadhaks here, but there was never any question of the Saraswati power in.


Sri Aurobindo:   In the old days long before you came plenty of things were brought down — including the love. Hardly one could bear it and even then only in a small measure. Is it any better now, I wonder? It does not look like it.


Sri Aurobindo: That is why I want the supermind ﬁrst, — and especially the peace, the balance in an intensity unshakable. There are several who have been trying to push on with the intensities, but — . Well, let us hope for the best. For God’s sake, peace, balance, an unshakable supramental poise and sanity ﬁrst. Ecstasies and intensities of other kinds can come afterwards.


Sri Aurobindo: I have answered the actual points in your letter separately, on the letter itself. But there is besides one thing that you must understand clearly. Things are no longer what they were before, when you were last here. At that time the Mother was bringing down a rapid (collective as well as individual) transformation and creation into the mental, vital and physical planes from above, by the power of a supramental Light and Force acting through the higher illumined mind and the psychic being. For that purpose she was calling down beings of a higher plane (like the one of which you speak) as an indispensable aid in that process.


Sri Aurobindo: All went on well enough so long as the work was on the mental, psychic and higher vital levels. But as soon as it began in the lower vital, it appeared at once that the lower vital and physical nature of human beings (at least of those here) was too small, obscure and full of rebellious impurities to admit of so great a working.  One after another failed in the test and you were among the ﬁrst to fall. The creation had to be postponed, the process changed, and, instead of doing all from above, it became necessary to come down into the lower vital and material nature for a long, slow, patient and difﬁcult work of opening and change.  This is the sadhana that has been going on here.


Sri Aurobindo: Are you prepared for this opening and change which needs an absolute sincerity and a work in which there is no room for pretence, selfdeception or a half-hearted will? You are very evidently deep down in your lower vital and material self, “cooped up” there; but you seem to have been fairly content and self-satisﬁed in this dark and unswept lodging. Talk of surrender or a mere idea or tepid wish for integral consecration will not do; there must be the push for a radical and total change.  It is not by taking a mere mental attitude that this can be done or even by any number of inner experiences which leave the outer man as he was. It is this outer man who has to open, to surrender and to change.


Sri Aurobindo: His every least movement, habit, action has to be surrendered, seen, held up and exposed to the divine Light, offered to the divine Force for its old forms and motives to be destroyed and the divine Truth and the action of the transforming consciousness of the Divine Mother to take their place.  If you want to make any progress while you are here, you will ﬁrst have to realise how much time you have lost and how far you are from this. Afterwards, you will have to see whether you can light a ﬁre of aspiration strong enough to burn up all that is unclean and obscure in you. Then only can you speak of the transformation of your lower vital nature.  “A far greater Truth” has nothing to do with Avatarhood or anything of the kind.


Sri Aurobindo: I meant by it the descent of the supramental Consciousness upon earth; all truths below the supramental (even that of the highest spiritual on the mental plane, which is the highest that has yet manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deﬁcient and unable to transform the earthly life, they can only at most modify and inﬂuence it. The supermind is the last Truth-consciousness of which the ancient seers spoke; there have been glimpses of it till now, sometimes an indirect inﬂuence or pressure, but it has not been brought down into the consciousness of the earth and ﬁxed there. To bring it down is the aim of our Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: Write to them that it is better not to enter into sterile intellectual discussions. The intellectual mind cannot even realise what the supermind is; what use, then, can there be in allowing it to discuss what it does not know? It is not by reasoning, but by constant experience, growth of consciousness and widening into the Light that one can reach those higher levels of consciousness above the intellect from which one can begin to look up to the Divine Gnosis. These levels are not yet the supermind, but they can receive something of its knowledge.  As to’s statement I do not catch what he means by , unless he means that the Vedic Rishis attained to the supermind for the Earth.


Sri Aurobindo: But that is precisely what they failed to do or perhaps did not even attempt. They tried to rise individually to the supramental plane, but they did not bring it down and make it a permanent part of the earth consciousness. Even there are verses of the Upanishad in which it is hinted that it is impossible to pass through the gates of the Sun (the symbol of Supermind) and yet retain an earthly body. It was because of this failure that the spiritual effort of India culminated in Mayavada.  Our Yoga is a double movement of ascent and descent; one rises to higher and higher levels of consciousness, but at the same time one brings down their power not only into mind and life, but in the end even into the body.


Sri Aurobindo: And the highest of these levels, the one at which it aims is the supermind. Only when that can be brought down is a divine transformation possible in the earth consciousness.   Yes, all that is the earth consciousness — mineral = matter, vegetable = the vital-physical creation, animal = the vital creation, man = the mental creation. Into the earth consciousness so limited to mind, vital, matter has to come the supramental creation.


Sri Aurobindo: Necessarily it cannot be in a great number — but even if it is only in a few at ﬁrst, that does not mean that it will have no effect on the rest or will not change the whole balance of the earth-nature.   The consciousness of this Earth alone. There is a separate global consciousness of the earth (as of other worlds) which evolves with the evolution of life on the planet.   It is ﬁrst through the individual that it becomes part of the earth consciousness and afterwards it spreads from the ﬁrst centres and takes up more and more of the global consciousness till it becomes an established force there.


Sri Aurobindo: Whose work? So far as bringing in spiritual forces goes, I suppose their work was fairly successful.  I am not aware that Ramakrishna or any other of those you speak of wanted to change the earth consciousness — they were concerned to raise people out of it, not to bring down anything into it, except spiritual force for personal salvation.  It does not matter very much what you expect. It depends on whether the greater consciousness can be brought down and ﬁxed here (as mind ﬁxed itself in the vital life of earth) or not.


Sri Aurobindo:   Not from the entire cosmos — from the earth consciousness, — because the earth is the place of evolution.  The supramental being on earth, as man is the mental being, the animal the vital etc.


Sri Aurobindo: All that is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at ﬁrst for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing inﬂuence of it on the earth life.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have never said any or all of these things. These egoistic terms are not those in which I think any more than these egoistic ambitions are those in which my vital moves. It is a higher Truth I seek, whether it makes men greater or not is not the question but whether it will give them truth and peace and light to live in and make life something better than a struggle with ignorance and falsehood and pain and strife. Then even if they are less great than the men of the past, my object will have been achieved.


Sri Aurobindo: For me mental conceptions cannot be the end of all things. I know that the supermind is a truth.  You do not seem to have followed the sense of my reasoning very well — perhaps because I clothe my arguments with  in a tone of humour. You have taken my humorous comment about Muthu with a portentous seriousness — if you really are not joking: but I suppose you are in spite of your disclaimer.  It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the supermind.


Sri Aurobindo: I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth consciousness — I see it above and know what it is — I feel it overgleaming my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the ﬁnal sense of the earth-evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should not follow my Truth-sense and Truth-vision. If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no question of or or anybody else in that. It is a question between the Divine and myself — whether it is the Divine Will or not, whether I am sent to bring that down or open the way for its descent or at least make it more possible or not. Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption, — I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others. (This is not to be circulated.)


Sri Aurobindo:   By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation — the realisation of Self, Bhagavan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual.


Sri Aurobindo: So far your opponent is right.  It is true that neither can be got in any effective way unless the whole being is turned towards it — unless there is a real and very serious spirit and dynamic reality of sadhana. So far you are right and the opponent also is right.  It is true that I want the supramental not for myself but for the earth and souls born on the earth, and certainly therefore I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental. But there are the conditions.


Sri Aurobindo: He must want the Divine Will ﬁrst and the soul’s surrender and the spiritual realisation (through works, bhakti, knowledge, self-perfection) on the way. So there everybody is right.  The central sincerity is the ﬁrst thing and sufﬁcient for an aspiration to be entertained, — a total sincerity is needed for the aspiration to be fulﬁlled. Amen!


Sri Aurobindo: I have no intention of achieving the supramental for myself only — I am not doing anything for myself, as I have no personal need of anything, neither of salvation (Moksha) nor supramentalisation. If I am seeking after supramentalisation, it is because it is a thing that has to be done for the earth consciousness and if it is not done in myself, it cannot be done in others. My supramentalisation is only a key for opening the gates of the supramental to the earth consciousness; done for its own sake, it would be perfectly futile. But it does not follow either that if or when I become supramental, everybody will become supramental. Others can so become who are ready for it, when they are ready for it — though of course the achievement in myself will be to them a great help towards it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is therefore quite legitimate to have the aspiration for it — provided (1) one does not make too personal or egoistic an affair of it turning it into a Nietzschean or other ambition to be a superman, (2) one is ready to undergo the conditions and stages needed for the achievement, (3) one is sincere and regards it as part of the seeking for the Divine and a consequent culmination of the divine Will in one and insists on no more than the fulﬁlment of that Will whatever it may be, psychisation, spiritualisation or supramentalisation. It should be  regarded as the fulﬁlment of God’s working in the world, not as a personal chance or achievement.


Sri Aurobindo: Why should I be in a ﬁx for that? I use the language of the mind because there is no other which human beings can understand, — even though most of them understand it badly. If I were to use a supramental language like Joyce, you would not even have the illusion of understanding it; so, not being an Irishman, I don’t make the attempt. But of course anyone who wants to change earth-nature must ﬁrst accept it in order to change it. To quote from an unpublished poem of my own: He who would bring the heavens here Must descend himself into clay And the burden of earthly nature bear And tread the dolorous way.


Sri Aurobindo:  No. I have never written on that except in and do not propose to start now. It would be mere words to the mind which would be likely to make its own wrong constructions about it.  The sadhak should ﬁrst get the higher consciousness down and know something by experience of the higher planes before trying to know what is the Supermind.


Sri Aurobindo:   Well, what I meant is that taking in view their present nature the psychisation would be a big change that is quite enough for them to concentrate on. To aim at the Intuition plane or Overmind now would be useless. But the result of psychisation of the whole nature is not small; it can bring about or embrace most of what have been celebrated as the great spiritual realisations. Only these are got by a sort of reﬂection in the human consciousness (mind, life, body), not by a ascension of the consciousness to the highest planes or a descent from above.


Sri Aurobindo: There are upgoings and downﬂowings from there only. If that much is gained one may think of the rest afterwards.  On the other hand there are others in whom there is the clear possibility of rising above after a sufﬁcient psychisation (when completed) of the being and then these two things go on together — psychisation and spiritualisation of the being, the latter process opening up the highest planes entirely.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no proposal to transform the whole earth consciousness — it is simply to introduce the supramental principle there which will transform those who can receive and embody it.  It happens that people may get the descent without noticing that it is a descent because they feel the result only. The ordinary Yoga does not go beyond the spiritual mind — people feel at the top of the head the joining with the Brahman, but they are not aware of a consciousness above the head. In the same way in the ordinary Yoga one feels the ascent of the awakened inner consciousness (Kundalini) to the where the Prakriti joins the Brahman-consciousness, but they do not feel the descent. Some may have had these things, but I don’t know that they understood their nature, principle or place in a complete sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: At least I never heard of these things from others before I found them out in my own experience. The reason is that the old Yogins when they went above the spiritual mind passed into samadhi, which means that they did not attempt to be conscious in these higher planes — their aim being to pass away into the Superconscient and not to bring the Superconscient into the waking consciousness, which is that of my Yoga.   They will perhaps say that there are “equivalents” in the old things or if the descent is not spoken of as descent it still happens in the old Yogas.   I never heard of silence descending in other Yogas — the mind goes into silence. Since however I have been writing of ascent and descent, I have been told from several quarters that there is nothing new in this Yoga — so I am wondering whether people were not getting ascents and descents without knowing it! or at least without noticing the process.


Sri Aurobindo: It is like the rising above the head and taking the station there — which I and others have experienced in this Yoga. When I spoke of it ﬁrst, people stared and thought I was talking nonsense. Wideness must have been felt in the old Yogas because otherwise one could not feel the universe in oneself or be free from the body consciousness or unite with the Anantam Brahman. But generally as in Tantrik Yoga one spoke of the consciousness rising to the Brahmarandhra, top of the head, as the summit. Rajayoga of course lays stress on Samadhi as the means of the highest experience.


Sri Aurobindo: But obviously if one has not the Brahmi sthiti in the waking state, there is no completeness in the realisation. The Gita distinctly speaks of being (which is equivalent to being in samadhi) and the Brahmi sthiti as a waking state in which one lives and does all actions.    So I have always thought. I explain this absence of the descent experiences myself by the old Yogas having been mainly conﬁned to the psycho-spiritual-occult range of experience — in which the higher experiences come into the still mind or the concentrated heart by a sort of ﬁltration or reﬂection — the ﬁeld of this experience being from the Brahmarandhra downward.


Sri Aurobindo: People went above this only in samadhi or in a condition of static mukti without any dynamic descent. All that was dynamic took place in the region of the spiritualised mental and vital-physical consciousness. In this Yoga the consciousness (after the lower ﬁeld has been prepared by a certain amount of psycho-spiritual-occult experience) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, inﬁnite Wideness and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get mukti but not perfection or transformation (except a relative psycho-spiritual change).


Sri Aurobindo: But if I say that, there will be a general howl against the unpardonable presumption of claiming to have a knowledge not possessed by the ancient saints and sages and pretending to transcend them. In that connection I may say that in the Upanishads (notably the Taittiriya) there are some indications of these higher planes and their nature and the possibility of gathering up the whole consciousness and rising into them. But this was forgotten afterwards and people spoke only of the buddhi as the highest thing with the Purusha or Self just above, but there was no clear idea of these higher planes.  Ergo, ascent possibly to unknown and ineffable heavenly regions in samadhi, but no descent possible — therefore no resource, no possibility of transformation here, only escape from life and mukti in Goloka, Brahmaloka, Shivaloka or the Absolute.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a thing which is new and has to be worked out by this Yoga.  I can say little about the method he [] speaks of for getting rid of dead concepts. Each mind has its own way of moving. My own has been a sort of readjustment or rectiﬁcation of positions and I should rather call it discrimination accompanied by a rearrangement of intuitions. At one time I had given much too big a place to “humanity” in my scheme of things with a number of ideas attached to that exaggeration which needed to be put right.


Sri Aurobindo: But the change did not come by doubt about what I had conceived before, but by a new light on things in which “humanity” automatically stepped down and got into its right place and all the rest rearranged itself in consequence. But all that is probably because I am constitutionally lazy (in spite of my present feats of correspondence) and prefer the easiest and most automatic method possible. I have a suspicion however that Krishnaprem’s method is essentially the same as mine, only he does it in a more diligent and conscientious spirit. For his remark about the concepts as ﬂags and not the means of advance seems to indicate that.   I certainly hope to bring down an effective power of the Truth which will replace eventually the Falsehood that has governed the minds and hearts of men for so long.


Sri Aurobindo: The liberation of a few individuals is a thing that is always possible and has always been done — but, to my seeing, it cannot be the sole aim of existence.  Whatever the struggles and sufferings and blunders of humanity, there is still in it an urge towards the Light, an impulse towards a greater Truth not only of the soul but the life. If it has not been done yet, it is surely because those who reached the Light and the greater Truth, rested there and saw in it more a means of escape for the soul than a means of transformation for the life. The liberation of the spirit is necessary, nothing can be done without it — but the transformation is also possible.


Sri Aurobindo:   It wants and it does not want something that it has not got. All that the supramental could give, the inner mind of the world would like to have, but its outer mind, its vital and physical do not like to pay the price. But after all I am not trying to change the world all at once but only to bring down centrally something into it it has not yet, a new consciousness and power.


Sri Aurobindo:   Of course. That’s what I have been telling you all along. It is not without reason that I am eager to see something better in this well-meaning but woe-begone planet.


Sri Aurobindo: But you are surely mistaken in thinking that I said that we work spiritually for the relief of the poor. I have never done that. My work is not to intervene in social matters within the frame of the present humanity but to bring down a higher spiritual light and power of a higher character which will make a radical change in the earth consciousness.  That is not a question of any importance, since the earth has millions of years of life before it and, if the Divine creation begins, it will develop at that time and itself decide the question.  It will depend upon the person whether he wants to leave it or not.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is an inner liberation and a strong spiritualisation of the mind and vital and a partial effect on the physical especially the physical mind, but mostly subjective. A mixture of the Ignorance, or at the very least a limitation of the active Knowledge, power, Ananda etc. remains always. At the same time if one withdraws from the outward physical consciousness, one can feel always the wide spiritual liberation, peace, living in the silent Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   These are questions and statements which people idly make as a matter of talk. They do not even know what it means or what is the difference between Supermind and Overmind. It is better therefore to leave all such questionings alone at present.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have not, I carefully avoided that ticklish subject.  Why not seven tails with an eighth on the head — everybody different colours, blue, magenta, indigo, green, scarlet, etc.; hair luxuriant but vermilion and ﬂying erect skywards; other details to match? Amen.


Sri Aurobindo: It has been the idea of many who have speculated on the subject that the body of the future race will be a luminous body ( ) and that might mean radio-active. But also it has to be considered (1) that a supramental body must necessarily be one in which the consciousness determines even the physical action and reaction to the most material and these therefore are not wholly dependent on material conditions or laws as now known, (2) that the subtle process will be more powerful than the gross, so that a subtle action of Agni will be able to do the action which would now need a physical change such as increased temperature.    But how is it going to change material conditions and laws without acting on the body as it is?  The subtle action of Agni is part of the workings of the Yogashakti even now; only its action is at present for perfecting and transformatory.


Sri Aurobindo: If the consciousness cannot determine the physical action and reaction in the present body, if it needs a different basis, then that means this different basis must be prepared by different means.   By what means? Physical? The old Yogis tried to do it by physical tapasya; others by seeking the elixir of life etc.


Sri Aurobindo: According to this Yoga, the action of the higher Force and consciousness which includes the subtle action of Agni has to open and prepare the body and make it more responsive to Consciousness-Force instead of being rigid in its present habits (called laws). But a different basis can only be created by the supramental action itself. What else but the supermind can determine its own basis?    What I did not understand is why the Supramental Force should not act at all on the present basis of the body.


Sri Aurobindo: That it cannot act fully without changing many things is obvious.  I did not intend to evade anything, except that in so far as I do not yet know what will be the chemical constitution of the changed body, I could not answer anything to that. That was why I said it needed investigation.  I was simply putting my idea on the matter which has always been that it is the supramental which will create its own physical basis. If you mean that the supramental cannot in the present body with its present processes that is true.


Sri Aurobindo: The processes will obviously have to be altered. How far the constitution of the body will be changed and in what direction is another question. As I said it may become as you suggest radio-active: Th´eon (Mother’s teacher in occultism) spoke of it as luminous,   But all that does not make it impossible for the supramental to act in the present body for change. It is what I am looking forward to at present.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course a certain preliminary transformation is necessary, just as the psychic and spiritual transformation precedes the supramental. But this is a change of the physical consciousness down to the submerged consciousness of the cells so that they may respond to higher forces and admit them and to a certain extent a change or at least a greater plasticity in the processes.  The rules of food etc. are meant to help that by minimising obstacles. How far this involves a change of the chemical constitution of the body I cannot say. It seems to me still that whatever preparatory changes there may be, it is only the action of the supramental Force that can conﬁrm and complete them.


Sri Aurobindo: It must have been a joke taken as a self-acclamation. Or perhaps what I said was that I have the power to overcome illness, but accident and poison and the I.M. still remain as possible means of death. Of course, the Mother and myself have hundreds of times thrown back the forces of illness and death by a slight concentration of force or even a use of will merely.  It is long since I have had anything but slight fragments of illness — (e.g. sneezes, occasional twitches of rheumatism or neuralgia: but the last is mostly now outside the body and does not penetrate) — with the exception of the eye and the throat (only one kind of cough though, the others can’t come) which are still vulnerable points. Ah yes, there is also prickly-heat; but that has diminished to almost nothing these last years.


Sri Aurobindo: There is sometimes an attempt at headache, but it remains above the head, tries to get in and then recedes. Giddiness also the same.  I don’t just now remember anything else. Those are the facts about “having no illness”. As for the conclusion, well, you can make a medical one or a Yogic one according to your state of knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo:   Your syllogism is: “One who becomes supramental, can conquer death.  Sri Aurobindo has become supramental.  Sri Aurobindo has conquered death.”  1st premiss right;


Sri Aurobindo: second premiss premature; conclusion at least premature and in any case excessive, for “can conquer” is turned into “has conquered” = is immortal. It is not easy, my dear doctor, to be a logician; the human reasoning animal is always making slight inaccuracies like that in his syllogisms which vitiate the whole reasoning. This might be correct: “One who becomes wholly supramental conquers death.  Sri Aurobindo is becoming supramental.  Sri Aurobindo is conquering death.”


Sri Aurobindo: But between “is conquering” and “has conquered” is a big difference. It is all the difference between present and future, logical possibility and logical certitude.  The premiss is false. I have never said that I am supramental — I have always said that I have achieved the overmind and am bringing down the supramental. That is a process and until the process is complete it cannot be said that “I am supramental”.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course when I say “I” — I mean the instrument — not the Consciousness above or the Person behind which contain all things in them.    It looks very much like a non sequitur. The ﬁrst part and the last are all right — but the link is fragile. How do you know I won’t take a fancy to die in between as a joke?


Sri Aurobindo:   Where would be the fun if I told you beforehand? However, I have no bad intentions for the moment.  I do not think exact correlations can always be traced between one system of spiritual and occult knowledge and another. All deal with the same material, but there are differences of standpoint, differences of view-range, a divergence in the mental idea of what is seen and experienced, disparate pragmatic purposes and therefore a difference in the paths surveyed, cut out or followed; the systems vary, each constructs its own schema and technique.


Sri Aurobindo: I have looked at the diagrams you sent me; I do not know whether I have grasped them rightly and many of the details are not clear to me. I suppose however that the three supernals are at the top, that the two below them (led to by Justice and Prudence from the psychic centre) are mind-planes or mind-centres, that Tiphareth in the middle is the psychic, the three between it and the earth are vital planes. In the absence of precise information I cannot carry the correlation farther.  Now as to the three Supernals. I do not quite understand L.O.E.’s sentence about them — for she speaks of two only, the real and higher man and the separated man.


Sri Aurobindo: Should I understand that these are the two on either side and that at the top is the Divine? If not, which are they and what is the third?  In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachchidananda. Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane. The Supermind could be added as a fourth, as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the upper hemisphere.


Sri Aurobindo: The Indian systems did not distinguish between the Overmind and the Supermind, which is the reason why they got confused about Maya (Overmind-Force), took it for the supreme creative power and lost the secret of the transformation — although the Vaishnava and Tantra Yogas groped to ﬁnd it again and were sometimes on the verge of success. For the rest, this, I think, has been the stumbling-block of all attempts at the discovery of the dynamic divine Truth; I know of none that has not imagined, as soon as it felt the Overmind lustres descending, that this was the true illumination, the gnosis — with the result that they either stopped short there and could get no farther, or else concluded that this too was only Maya or Lila and that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into the Supreme.  Again, what may be meant is rather the three fundamentals of the present manifestation. In the Indian system, these are Ishwara, Shakti and Jiva, or else Sachchidananda, Maya and Jiva. But in our system which seeks to go beyond the present manifestation, these could very well be taken for granted and, looked at from the point of view of the planes of consciousness, the three highest — Ananda (with Sat and Chit resting upon it), Supermind and Overmind might be called the three Supernals.


Sri Aurobindo: My difﬁculty in correlating them with the three Cabbalistic supernals is twofold. First, white may very well be the symbolic hue of Sachchidananda, but black and grey have no suitability for the two others; the symbol hue of Supermind is gold, and Overmind, which is in contact with Supermind, has an iridescent brilliance which is anything but grey. Unless we are to understand it like the Christian mystics of the negative path (see the Christa Seva Sangha journal) to whom the Divine is a supreme Darkness and the plane of consciousness through which he is reached a supreme Ignorance! Then again, here the Supermind and Overmind would be parallel worlds (?), but in fact these two are one above, one below the other, and you have to pass through and beyond Overmind, if you would reach Supermind, while still above and beyond Supermind are the worlds of Sachchidananda.  Tiphareth is certainly the psychic, not the emotional only.


Sri Aurobindo: It is central, (in our system the psychic stands behind the others, supporting them from behind the heart-centre); it is also in direct connection with all except the earth-centre (in ours it is not quite so, but still in the earth consciousness the psychic is so covered with the darkened vital that to get to it from the outer physical consciousness you have usually to make your way through the covering vital). All this makes it pretty clear that Tiphareth is either the psychic or else the psychic + the emotional plane or centre.  You speak of the ﬂaming sword and the gulf below the Overmind. But is there a gulf — or any other gulf than human unconsciousness? In all the series of the planes or grades of consciousness there is nowhere any real gulf, always there are connecting gradations and one can ascend from step to step.


Sri Aurobindo: Between the Overmind and the human mind there are a number of more and more luminous gradations; but, as these are superconscient to human mind (except one or two of the lowest of which it gets some direct touches) it is apt to regard them as a superior Inconscience. So one of the Upanishads speaks of the Ishwara consciousness as, deep Sleep, because it is only in Samadhi that man usually enters into it, so long as he does not try to turn his waking consciousness into a higher state.  Finally, I may observe that the Cabbala system seems to look at and describe the whole from a certain spiritual-mental or spiritual-psychic view from below the supernals. This is quite natural so long as we live in the human centres. There are two systems, one concentric with the psychic at the centre; another vertical, an ascension and descent, like a ﬂight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the Supermind + Overmind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: In our system there are not multiple paths of interconnection, or rather there are, but these are a subsidiary and not the central knowledge. For us there is one way, one path; ﬁrst, a conversion inwards, a going within to ﬁnd the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature; next, an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises the whole lower nature so as to make it ready for the divine change. Going upwards, one passes beyond the human mind and at each stage of the ascent there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an infusion of this new consciousness into the whole of the nature.  Thus rising beyond intellect through illuminated higher mind to the intuitive consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and through an intuitivised will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact.


Sri Aurobindo: So, proceeding from intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. And the last conversion is the supramental, for once there, once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression is still possible.  It is not I only who have done what the Vedic Rishis did not do.  Chaitanya and others developed an intensity of Bhakti which is absent in the Veda and many other instances can be given. Why should the past be the limit of spiritual experience?


Sri Aurobindo:   If so, it is not a fact of much importance.  These doubts come from the mind — for which action is inferior to thought and thought itself something that comes out from the Silence. It cannot understand the supramental view of things in which there is no division or opposition between the Supreme Existence and the supreme Power that sees, thinks, acts and creates.


Sri Aurobindo: Wonderful! The realisation of the Self which includes the liberation from ego, the consciousness of the One in all, the established and consummated transcendence out of the universal Ignorance, the ﬁxity of the consciousness in the union with the Highest, the Inﬁnite and Eternal is not anything worth doing or recommending to anybody — is “not a very difﬁcult stage”!  Nothing new? Why should there be anything new? The object of spiritual seeking is to ﬁnd out what is eternally true, not what is new in Time.


Sri Aurobindo: From where did you get this singular attitude towards the old Yogas and Yogis? Is the wisdom of the Vedanta and Tantra a small and triﬂing thing? Have then the sadhaks of this Asram attained to self-realisation and are they liberated Jivan-muktas free from ego and ignorance? If not, why then do you say “it is not a very difﬁcult stage” “their goal is not high” “Is it such a long process?”  I have said that this Yoga was “new” because it aims at a change in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation.


Sri Aurobindo: But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this Yoga as of any other?  It is not a long process? The whole life and several lives more are often not enough to achieve it. Ramakrishna’s guru took 30 years to arrive and even then he was not satisﬁed that he had realised it.


Sri Aurobindo: Do? why should he want to do anything if he was in the eternal peace or Ananda or union with the Divine? If a man is spiritual and has gone beyond the vital and mind, he does not need to be always “doing” something. The self or spirit has the joy of its own existence. It is free to do nothing and free to do everything — but not because it is bound to action and unable to exist without it.


Sri Aurobindo: Do you think that self-realisation is a tamasic state — a complete incapacity and inertia?    Certainly they can realise the self. It is not at all necessary to go to the supramental planes for that.  I have heard that people from outside often ﬁnd the sadhaks here full of an insufferable pride and arrogance, looking on all others outside as far below them!


Sri Aurobindo: If it is so, it is a most foolish and comically ridiculous attitude.  As for the depreciation of all the old Yogas as something quite easy, unimportant and worthless, and the consequent depreciation of Buddha and Yajnavalkya and other great spiritual ﬁgures of the past, is it not evidently absurd on the face of it?  Without puriﬁcation it is not possible to live always in the Brahman consciousness. While living in that Brahman consciousness one is free from the sense of a separative ego. As for the transformation of the nature, that is not their object.


Sri Aurobindo: All that is not necessary for those who seek only liberation.    There are many planes above man’s mind — the supramental is not the only one, and on all of them the self can be realised, — for they are all spiritual planes.  Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed together only in the surface consciousness — the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical are separate from each other. Those who seek the self by the old Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body and realise the self apart from these things.


Sri Aurobindo: It is perfectly easy to separate mind, vital and physical from each other without the need of supermind. It is done by the ordinary Yogas.  The difference between this and the old Yogas is not that they are incompetent and cannot do these things — they can do them perfectly well — but that they proceed from realisation of self to Nirvana or some Heaven and abandon life, while this does not abandon life. The supramental is necessary for the transformation of terrestrial life and being, not for reaching the self. One must realise self ﬁrst — only afterwards can one realise the supermind.


Sri Aurobindo: Who here has a direct action from the Supermind? It is the ﬁrst news I have of it. Even indirect action from the supramental is rare. Whatever comes to most comes from the intermediate planes.


Sri Aurobindo: The men who live in the Self are always there at all times.  Nothing in the outer nature can affect that.  Of course they will — it can only be prevented by the lower movements if you assent to the lower movements; one who refuses to accept them as his real being, can always withdraw from them to the self. The movements of Nature become for them an outer thing not belonging to their true being and having no power to pull them down from it.  Only that they often sought it by one line alone, the line varying in different Yogas, while in ours it may come in several ways.


Sri Aurobindo: Naturally.  Spiritual and supramental are not the same thing. The spiritual planes from higher mind to Overmind are accessible to the old sadhanas so there is no difﬁculty about that. If they were not accessible there would have been no Yoga at all and no Yogis in the past in India.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not always discreet to speak of all these things to the visitors who come here from abroad. is a man with a trained intellect; he must be left to see for himself and judge. He has a great respect for the Ramakrishna Mission as the creation of Vivekananda and the continuer of the work of Ramakrishna and for Europeans like him these metaphysical differences of opinion — for so he would regard them — are of no importance, — it is the opportunity for a spiritual approach to the Divine Reality that they are looking for and all that opens the way commands their respect. So, to lay emphasis on a difference with regard to the doctrine or the exact course of the Path followed might in his idea be a sign of a sectarian spirit. All ways lead to the Divine; the importance for us of not subscribing to the Shankara idea is that we need freedom to move towards the dynamic realisation of the Divine in the world and the idea of the Great Illusion bars the road to that.


Sri Aurobindo: But for them the important thing is to reach the Divine. It was therefore not at all useful to point the difference before him at this time.  Divine union, yes — but for the ascetic schools it was union with the featureless Brahman, the Unknowable beyond existence or, if with the Ishwara, still it was the Ishwara in a supracosmic consciousness. From that point of view Patanjali’s aphorism is sound enough. When he says Yoga, he means the process of Yoga, the object which has to be kept in view in the process — for by the cessation of one gets into and  is the only way of uniting solely and completely with the Brahman beyond existence.


Sri Aurobindo:  It has nothing to do with the supermind, for nobody can be aware of the supermind without opening the higher reaches in him ﬁrst — the supermind is superconscient to the human consciousness. The man in question is in touch with the higher consciousness, so he has not to put any kind of inner pressure on himself to oblige the mind and other parts to admit the higher state or movements — it needs only a turning of himself upward or a slight movement of opening to set the higher consciousness in motion and get results. This statement is of course true only up to a certain point and within limits. If the same man wanted to reach the supermind or transform his body it would not be possible for that to come to him naturally.


Sri Aurobindo: Surya is the symbol of the Divine Light, the Divine Truth, ultimately of the Supermind. Samyama is a process of pressure on the consciousness by which the secret Truth, the involved intuition is released — so by a constant pressure on the consciousness by which the Divine Truth is liberated the Knowledge of the worlds can come.    I doubt if there are many — they would give the answers you suggest. As for Overmind and Intuition, there are some who are in contact with these planes, I suppose.


Sri Aurobindo: Those who live in them must be very rare.    I suppose they are not intended to take it up — only an opening can be given for those who want to rise into a somewhat higher consciousness than they have now.  It is only because they make the peace an end, not, as we aim at doing, a basis for the divine consciousness and all its dynamisms.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a great difference in consciousness, because Nirvana means absorption into a static Brahman on the level of spiritual mind — the other would mean identiﬁcation with the integral Divine in the much higher Truth of Supermind.  Nothing depends on the numbers. The numbers of Buddhism and Christianity were so great because the majority professed it as a creed without its making the least difference to their external life. If the new consciousness were satisﬁed with that, it could also and much more easily command homage and acceptance by the whole earth. It is because it is a greater consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, that it will insist on a real change.


Sri Aurobindo: Your argument assumes that the greater consciousness will be in its creations inferior to the inferior consciousness.  It would on the contrary be impossible for them not to feel that a greater Light and Power had come on the earth.  How do you know that it will have no effect on the ordinary people? It will inevitably increase their possibilities and even though all cannot rise to the highest, that will mean a great change for the earth.


Sri Aurobindo: Your objections are sound. It is the usual overstatement by which the human mind tries to give an added and superlative force and value to its ideas and tenets, but only succeeds in making them vulnerable.  What the compassionate Bodhisattwa ought to do is to become a superscientist and ﬁnd some way of releasing atoms in such style that the whole earth would be blown to smithereens — this would release all beings on it from their sufferings. But unfortunately the force of karma would, I suppose, create a new earth and bring them all back there to suffer. So no release that way either.


Sri Aurobindo: Still it would give a respite during which he might go to Nirvana and come back again when needed to repeat his compassionate action.  Of course the animal difﬁculty is insuperable, because animals must enter the human stage ﬁrst before liberation — unless of course either animals become humanised and begin talking and thinking in philosophical terms (perhaps it will not be necessary for them to write poetry and paint pictures or make music), or else animals disappear altogether being no longer necessary to the evolution.   About the One there are different versions. I just read somewhere that the Buddhist One is a Superbuddha from whom all Buddhas come — but it seemed to me a rehash of Buddhism in Vedantic terms born of a modern mind.


Sri Aurobindo: The Permanent of Buddhism has always been supposed to be Supracosmic and Ineffable — that is why Buddha never tried to explain what it was; for, logically, how can one talk about the Ineffable? It has really nothing to do with the Cosmos which is a thing of sanskaras and Karma.    According to both Buddha and Shankara liberation means of the individual in some transcendent Permanence that is not individualised — so logically a belief in the individual soul must prevent liberation while the sense of misery in the world leads to the attempt to escape.  Buddha said he was repeating an ancient knowledge that had existed before him and restoring its true form, so he evades this objection.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no difference between such a description and what is meant by soul, except that it is called “impersonal” — but evidently here impersonal is used as opposed to the thing dependent on name, body and form, which is called personality. Europeans especially, but also people without philosophic ideas would easily mistake this outward personality for the soul and then they would deny the name of soul to the unborn and endless entity. Do they then consider it as spirit or self —?


Sri Aurobindo: But the difﬁculty is that the old Buddhists rejected the conception of also.  So we are left entirely at sea. The Nihilistic Buddhistic teaching is plain and comprehensible that there is no soul, only a bundle of Sanskaras continuing or a stream of them renewing themselves without dissolution (Nirvana). But this Mahayanist affair seems a sort of loose and covert compromise with Vedanta.


Sri Aurobindo: The two statements [ ] are not only almost but absolutely contradictory. Nirvana cannot be at once the ending of the Path with nothing beyond to explore and yet only a rest house or rather the beginning of the Higher Path with everything still to explore. I think that different views of different Buddhist minds or schools must have been jumbled together without reconciliation. The reconciliation would be that it is the end of the lower Path through the lower Nature and the beginning of the Higher Evolution. In that case it would accord exactly with the teaching of our Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   The phrase “to pass on” shows that what is meant by them is an evolution not on earth but somewhere beyond, God knows where. In that case Nirvana would be a place or world on the way to other worlds and the soul evolves from one world to another — e.g. from earth to Nirvana and from Nirvana to some Beyond-Nirvana. This is an entirely European idea and it is most unlikely that it was held by the Buddhists. The Indian idea was that the evolution is here and even the Gods if they want to go beyond their Godhead and get liberation have to come down on earth for the purpose.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the Western spiritualists and others who think that the birth on earth is a stage of progress from some place inferior to earth and after once being born on earth one does not return but goes to some other world and remains there till one can progress to some other better world and so on and on and on and up and up and up as Ramsay MacDonald would say. Again, this “perfected social order on Earth” is certainly not a Buddhist idea, the Buddhas never dreamed of it — their preoccupation was with helping men towards Nirvana, not towards a perfected order here. All that is a sheer contradiction of Buddhism and smells Europe from 3 miles off.    How is this Absolute different from the Absolute of the Vedanta?


Sri Aurobindo: or this emancipation different from the Vedantic mukti? If it were so, there would never have been all this quarrel between Buddhism and the Vedantic schools. It must be a new-fangled version of Buddhism or else it was a later development in which Buddhism reduced itself back to Adwaita.   Yes.


Sri Aurobindo: But is this Higher Evolution really a Buddhistic idea or only a European version of what Nirvana might be?    The extracts you have sent are very interesting and quite sound — the processes recommended can, if one can carry them out, help greatly in the quieting of the mind.  The Tibetan Nirvana as described in the last extract is very much like the Tao of Laotse. It is more and more said now that that is the real teaching of Buddha and of Buddhism.


Sri Aurobindo:   Somebody sent me some extracts about ways of meditation which were good. There are elements in most Yogas which enter into this one, so it is not surprising if there is something in Buddhism also. But such notions as a Higher Evolution beyond Nirvana seem to me not genuinely Buddhistic, unless of course there is some offshoot of Buddhism which developed something so interpreted by the author.


Sri Aurobindo: I never heard of it as part of Buddha’s teachings — he always spoke of Nirvana as the goal and refused to discuss metaphysically what it might be.  It is a movement that has taken from each previous movement European or Asiatic some of its knowledge and mixed it with much error and imagination of a rather vital character. It is that mixture and the mental character of its knowledge that prevent it from being a sound thing. Many start with it, but have to leave it if they want to get to real spiritual life and knowledge.  I am surprised at Tagore’s remark about the; he must have greatly misunderstood or misheard me.


Sri Aurobindo: I did tell him that I would expand only after making a perfect (inner) foundation here, but I gave no date. I did give that date of two years long before in my letter to Barin, but I had then a less ample view of the work to be done than I have now — and I am now more cautious about assigning dates than I was once. To ﬁx a precise time is impossible except in the two regions of certitude — the pure material which is the ﬁeld of mathematical certitudes and the supramental which is the ﬁeld of divine certitudes. In the planes in between where life has its word to say and things have to evolve under shock and stress, Time and Energy are too much in a ﬂux and apt to kick against the rigour of a preﬁxed date or programme.  You will say, “But at present the Mother has drawn back and it is the supramental that is to blame, because it is in order to bring down the supramental into matter that she retires.”


Sri Aurobindo: The supramental is not to blame; the supramental could very well have come down into matter under former conditions, if the means created by the Mother for the physical and vital contact had not been vitiated by the wrong attitude, the wrong reactions in the Asram atmosphere. It was not the direct supramental Force that was acting, but an intermediate and preparatory force that carried in it a modiﬁed Light derived from the supramental; but this would have been sufﬁcient for the work of opening the way for the highest action, if it had not been for the irruption of these wrong forces on the yet unconquered lower (physical) vital and material plane. The interference was creating adverse possibilities which could not be allowed to continue. The Mother would not have retired otherwise; and even as it is it is not meant as an abandonment of the ﬁeld but is only (to borrow a now current phrase from a more external enterprise) a temporary strategic retirement, The supramental is therefore not responsible; on the contrary, it is the descent of the supramental that would end all the difﬁculty.


Sri Aurobindo:   Our object is the supramental realisation and we have to do whatever is necessary for that or towards that under the conditions of each stage. At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established. Other things can come in their proper time.


Sri Aurobindo: What is the real need now is not insistence on physical nearness, which is one of those other things, but the psychic opening in the physical consciousness and the constant presence and guidance there.     I have never said that I wrote from the supermind, so the question does not arise.  You seem to be very much in a hurry to get at the supermind.


Sri Aurobindo: I have said that it cannot be done like that, a patient preparation of the nature is needed and I am concerned with that now.  What do you mean by divinisation of life? Death and disease can only disappear by divinisation of the — and that is not yet here.    I don’t know what you mean by developing sides.


Sri Aurobindo: I am concerned with preparing the nature for the supramental possibility — however long that may take — and I have no time or energy to waste on side issues. That preparation is the only thing I can recommend to you; all the “sides” necessary will come with it.  My answer stands. I have repeatedly said recently that we are trying against great difﬁculties to bring down the supramental into the physical plane. If the supramental were already there, the body divinised, matter transformed, there would be no difﬁculty and no need of the endeavour.


Sri Aurobindo: I would recall to you what I said in my letter to that it was not the direct supramental Force which was working up till now but a preparatory Force that carried in it a modiﬁed Light derived from the supramental. The direct Force can begin working only when the mind, vital and physical are sufﬁciently ready.   I must remind you that I have been an intellectual myself and no stranger to doubts — both the Mother and myself have had one side of the mind as positive and as insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be. We could never have been contented with the shining ideas and phrases which a Rolland or another takes for gold coin of Truth. We know well what is the difference between a subjective experience and a dynamic outward-going and realising Force.


Sri Aurobindo: So although we have faith — and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him? — we do not found ourselves on faith alone but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer down to the ﬁeld of earth and Matter.  If I believe in the probability and not only the possibility, if I feel practically certain of the supramental descent — I do not ﬁx a date, — it is because I have my grounds for the belief, not merely a faith in the air. I that the supramental descent is inevitable — l have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age.


Sri Aurobindo: But even if I knew it to be for a later time, I would not swerve from my path or be discouraged or ﬂag in my labour. Formerly I might have been, but not now after all the path I have traversed.  When one is sure of the Truth, or even when one believes the thing one pursues to be the only possible solution, one does not stipulate for an immediate success, one travels towards the Light taking as well worth facing every risk of the adventure. Still, like you, it is now in this life that I insist on it and not in another or in the hereafter.


Sri Aurobindo: But those are the ideas and feelings that always rise up in you when the adverse force presses on you and you give ear or even partly listen to its suggestions. You yourself have given the answer to it — the solutions suggested by these forces are not solutions at all. No doubt, the period is very difﬁcult, not only for you but for everybody, — but the struggle in the material plane was bound to be difﬁcult and prolonged, it is the cause of the whole problem, the critical stage of the whole action, because the victory there would decide everything for good and all.    I suppose the (vital’s) will to resist will disappear: I don’t know about the date — dates are things that one ought not to ﬁx too rigidly; but I certainly hope we won’t have to wait for a decade!