Sri Aurobindo: Let us be more sanguine and put the beginning of the decade and not its end as the era of the Descent. It is more likely then to make haste.  As for faith, you write as if I had never had a doubt or any difﬁculty. I have had worse than any human mind can think of.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not because I have ignored difﬁculties, but because I have seen them more clearly, experienced them on a larger scale than anyone living now or before me that, having faced and measured them, I am sure of the results of my work. Even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I should go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe. But why should I feel that all this may come to nothing when I see each step and where it is leading and every week and day — once it was every year and month and hereafter it will be every day and hour — brings me so much nearer to my goal? In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difﬁculty gives its help and has its value and the Night itself carries in it the burden of the light that has to be.  As for your own case, it comes to this that experiences come and stop, there are constant ups and downs, in times of recoil and depression no advance at all seems to have been made, there is as yet no certitude.


Sri Aurobindo: So it was with me also, so it is with everyone, not with you alone. The way to the heights is always like that up to a certain point, but the ups and downs, the difﬁculties and obstacles are no proof that it is a chimera to aspire to the summits.     I am afraid I cannot endorse your reading of the situation, at least so far as the Mother and myself and the prospects of the work are concerned.


Sri Aurobindo: I can agree only that we have had a heavy time of it recently and that there has been a strong attack on the plane of the physical and material — but that (heavy attacks) is a thing we have been accustomed to for the last 20 years and it has never prevented us from making any necessary advance. I have never had any illusions about the path being comfortable and easy — I knew all along that the work could only be done if all the essential difﬁculties rose and were faced — so their rising cannot tire or dishearten me — whatever obstinacy there may be in the difﬁculties whether our own or in the sadhaks or in Nature. . . .  No, I am not tired or on the point of giving up. I have made inwardly steps in front in the last two or three months which had seemed impossible because of the obstinate resistance for years together and it is not an experience which pushes me to despair and give up. If there is much resistance on one side, there have been large gains on the other — all has not been a picture of sterile darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: You yourself are kept back only by the demon of doubt which bangs on you each door as you are opening it — you have only to set about resolutely slaying the Rakshasa and the doors will open to you as they have done to many others who were held up by their own mind or vital nature.    One can only say that it advances, but to ﬁx — or at least to proclaim — a time is not permitted — for which there are many good occult reasons.


Sri Aurobindo: The Higher Consciousness is there already — it depends on the sadhak how much (or little) he receives of it and in what way.  The supramental consciousness is not yet down in the material, but it is no use calling that for all, — hardly anyone could receive it at present. But up to just below that all is there. It is a question of receiving, not of calling down, for that each has to open — by whatever degrees — and call it into himself.


Sri Aurobindo:   At present since the sadhana came down to the physical consciousness — or rather it is a combination of MaheshwariMahasaraswati forces.     Yes, there has been some progress in that respect and all progress in the psychic or spiritual consciousness of the sadhaks makes the descent more easy.


Sri Aurobindo: But the main cause is that the Overmind principle which is the immediate secret support of the present earth-nature with all its limitations is more and more undergoing the pressure of the Supramental and letting through a greater Light and Power. For so long as the Overmind intervenes (the principle of the Overmind being a play of forces, each trying to realise itself as the Truth) the law of struggle remains and with it the opportunity for the adverse Forces.     No.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only here that it can act for the present — in the forces outside, there is no preparation to receive it.     No, the supramental has not descended into the body or into matter — it is only at the point where such a descent has become not only possible but inevitable — I am speaking of course of my own experience. But as my own experience is the centre and condition of the rest, that is sufﬁcient for the promise.


Sri Aurobindo: I am not able to answer your letter just now for it is full of bristling questions, but I shall do it today — in the course of the day. Only my difﬁculty is that you all seem to expect some kind of miraculous faery-tale change and do not realise that it is a rapid and concentrated evolution which is the aim of my sadhana and that there must be a process for it, a working of the higher on the lower and a dealing with all the necessary materials — not a sudden ﬁat of the Creator by which everything is done on a given date. It is a suprarational but not an irrational process. What is to be done, will happen — perhaps with a rush even — but in a workmanlike way and not according to fancy.  However I will try to explain all that as far as possible — in principle only of course — as far as it can be explained to the physical mind which has not yet any notion of what the supramental is.


Sri Aurobindo: For the rest, I will try to meet the points you make.    As the moment of the possibility of the supramental Descent grows nearer, these forces have become more eager to keep hold on the Asram atmosphere and break the sadhana of anyone they can touch. Their main aim is to get as many as possible to leave the Asram so that they may not share in the descent and so that the descent itself may be delayed and disturbed by a constant tempest in the atmosphere. That is why I put the notice suggesting that the sadhaks should not admit these forces and need not.


Sri Aurobindo: To be on guard and admit no violent and irrational movements, to be calm and insistent in faith and self-opening to us is all that is needed.  1.2.34. It is supposed to be always a year of manifestation.  2.3.45 is the year of power — when the thing manifested gets full force. 4.5.67 is the year of complete realisation.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is true that there is an increasingly powerful descent of the Higher Force. Many now see the lights and colours around the Mother and her subtle luminous forms — it means that their vision is opening to supraphysical realities, it is not a phantasy.  The colours or lights you see are forces from various planes and each colour indicates a special force.  The supramental Force is descending, but it has not yet taken possession of the body or of matter — there is still much resistance to that.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a supramentalised Overmind Force that has already touched and this may at any time change into or give place to the Supramental in its own native power.    There is indeed something preparing to descend and the dream was probably a suggestion to you to stay so as to receive its touch after which your sadhana could proceed at home without difﬁculty, as there would be Something else within you doing the sadhana with your constant assent as the one necessity. The only difﬁculty in the way of health is a certain obscurity in the body consciousness itself which makes it consent readily to habitual touches of the force that makes for illness; otherwise if the body consciousness as well as the mind and vital were open any illness that came would immediately be dissipated. Keep a quiet and steady will for the opening of the consciousness and the union and do not allow depression or any idea of frustration.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep also a concentrated call in the heart. With those two things the result is sure.    The motor car by itself only means a rapid progress. It is true that the Supramental Force is preparing its descent.


Sri Aurobindo:  It would not necessarily be known by everybody beforehand.  Besides even if the descent were here one would have to be ready before one could get the ﬁnal change.    The Pure Existence is not something abstract but substantial and concrete. Moreover it is descending into the body, so it is quite natural to feel it materially.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not know who was’s informant, but certainly the Mother never said to anybody that the Supermind was to descend on the 24th November. Dates cannot be ﬁxed like that. The descent of the supermind is a long process or at least a process with a long preparation and one can only say that the work is going on sometimes with a strong pressure for completion, sometimes retarded by the things that rise from below and have to be dealt with before farther progress can be made. The process is a (spiritual) evolutionary process concentrated into a brief period — it could be done otherwise (by what men would regard as a miraculous intervention) only if the human mind were more ﬂexible and less attached to its ignorance than it is.


Sri Aurobindo: As we envisage it, it must manifest in a few ﬁrst and then spread, but it is not likely to sweep over the earth in a moment. It is not advisable to discuss too much what it will do and how it will do it, because these are things the Supermind itself will ﬁx, acting out of that Divine Truth in it, and the mind must not try to ﬁx for it grooves in which it will run. Naturally, the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functioning of the body must be among the ultimate results of a supramental change; but the details of these things must be left for the supramental Energy to work out according to the truth of its own nature.    When I wrote in my letter about the supermind and the obstinate resistance, I spoke of course of something I had already spoken of before.


Sri Aurobindo: I did not mean that the resistance was of an unexpected character or had altered anything essential. But in its nature the descent is not something arbitrary and miraculous, but a rapid evolutionary process compressed into a few years which proceeds by taking up the present nature into its Light and pouring its Truth into the inferior planes. That cannot be done in the whole world at a time, but is done like all such processes ﬁrst through selected Adharas and then on a wider scale. We have to do it through ourselves ﬁrst and through the circle of sadhakas gathered around us in the terrestrial consciousness as typiﬁed here. If a few open, that is sufﬁcient for the process to be possible.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand if there is a general misunderstanding and resistance (not in all, but in many), that makes it difﬁcult and the process more laborious, but it does not make it impossible.  I was not suggesting that it has become impossible, but that if the circumstances are made unfavourable by our being unable to concentrate enough on this thing of capital importance and having too much work to do of an irrelevant kind, the descent was likely to take longer than it would do otherwise. Certainly, when the supramental does touch earth with a sufﬁcient force to dig itself in into the earth consciousness, there will be no more chance of any success or survival for the Asuric Maya.  The rest that I spoke of about the human and the divine had to do with the intermediate period between before it is down.  What I meant was that if the Mother were able to bring out the Divine Personalities and Powers into her body and physical being, as she was doing for several months without break some years ago, the brightest period in the history of the Asram, things would be much more easy and all these dangerous attacks that now take place would be dealt with rapidly and would in fact be impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: In those days when the Mother was either receiving the sadhaks for meditation or otherwise working and concentrating all night and day without sleep and very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness. The power used was not that of the Supermind, but of the Overmind, but it was sufﬁcient for what was being done. Afterwards because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers through which she was doing the action behind a veil and come down into the physical human level and act according to its conditions and that meant difﬁculty, struggle, illness, ignorance and inertia. All has been for long slow, difﬁcult, almost sterile in appearance. Nevertheless our work was going on behind that appearance and now it is again becoming possible to go forward.


Sri Aurobindo: But for the advance to be anything like general or swift in its process, the attitude of the sadhaks, not of a few only, must change. They must cling less to the conditions and feelings of the external physical consciousness and open themselves to the true consciousness of the Yogin and sadhaka. If they did that, the inner eye would open and they would not be bewildered or alarmed if the Mother again manifested externally something of the Divine Personalities and Powers as she did before. They would not be asking her to be always on their level, but would be glad to be drawn swiftly or gradually up towards hers. The difﬁculties would be ten times less and a larger easier securer movement possible.


Sri Aurobindo: This was what I meant and I suppose I manifested some impatience at the slowness of so many to realise what is after all a logical conclusion from the very principle of our Yoga which is that of a transformation, all that is disharmonious in human nature being enlightened out of existence, all that makes for harmony being changed into its divine equivalent, purer, greater, nobler, more beautiful and much being added which has been lacking to the human evolution . I meant that things could move more swiftly towards this if the sadhaks had a less ignorant attitude, but if they could not yet reach that, we had of course to go on anyhow until the supramental descent came down to the material level.  Finally, you must get rid of this gratuitous tendency to despair.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculty for you has been created by the indulgence given to this formation I speak of; that ﬁnally dismissed, the difﬁculty would disappear. Progress might be slow at ﬁrst, but progress would come; it would quicken afterwards and, with the supramental force here, there would be for you as for others the full speed and certitude.     But it is not the supramental that is acting at present — the supramental won’t act until it is rooted and established in Matter.


Sri Aurobindo: If it were the supramental, you would not be having these difﬁculties.  It is at most the cosmic Overmind that is able to act now, but even there there is no idea of punishment; it is a play of forces and when the force of the physical consciousness becomes too prominent it acts according to its dharma and the other forces are covered over for the time. Our own force acts in this play of forces to help the sadhak through till he gets himself into the silence within and the cosmic consciousness as a whole with the Higher Force action to regulate and harmonise the progress — after which it is plainer sailing. There can be no question of our withdrawing protection and help. As for your reading these books, we have no objection at all, so long as you feel the need of it.


Sri Aurobindo: When the inner life becomes more active again, you can either drop them again or make all mental activity a part of the sadhana according to your condition and inner impulse at the time.     I have felt bound to explain so much [ ] though I would have preferred not to write about these things. I do hope you will throw all that behind you.


Sri Aurobindo: I feel a great longing that the sadhaks should be free of all that. For so long as the present state of things continues with ﬁres of this kind raging all around and the atmosphere in a turmoil, the work I am trying to do, certainly not for my own sake or for any personal reason, will always remain under the stroke of jeopardy and I do not know how the descent I am labouring for is to fulﬁl itself. In fact, the Mother and I have to give ninetenths of our energy to smoothing down things, to keeping the sadhaks tolerably contented etc. etc. etc. One-tenth and in the Mother’s case not even that can alone go to the real work; it is not enough. It is not surprising either that you should feel it difﬁcult to get on in all this.


Sri Aurobindo: But then why not push these things away from you and keep a clear ﬁeld in you for the Divine? That, if everybody, or even a sufﬁcient number could do it, would be the greatest help I could receive.   I have already spoken about the bad condition of the world; the usual idea of the occultists about it is that the worse they are, the more is probable the coming of an intervention or a new revelation from above. The ordinary mind cannot know — it has either to believe or disbelieve or wait and see.  As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended.


Sri Aurobindo: I know with absolute certitude that the supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conﬂicting forces. For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve something with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is however certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the situation. My faith and will are for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of the human intelligence — mysticallyrationally, as one might put it. To say more would be going beyond that line. You don’t want me to start prophesying, I suppose?


Sri Aurobindo: As a rationalist, you can’t.    I am myself living in the physical consciousness and have been for several years. At ﬁrst it was a plunge into the physical — into all its obscurity and inertia, afterwards it was a station in the physical open to a higher and higher consciousness and slowly having fought out in it the struggle of transformation of the physical consciousness with a view to prepare it for the supramental change.  It is possible to go back to the mental level where one receives all the mental realisations readily enough if the mind is open and bright.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is not the course that the sadhana usually follows.    It is a little difﬁcult to say whether all have to come down totally into the physical. The Mother and I had to do it because the work could not be otherwise done. We had tried to do it from above through the mind and higher vital, but it could not be because the sadhaks were not ready to follow — their lower vital and physical refused to share in what was coming down or else misused it and became full of exaggerated and violent reactions.


Sri Aurobindo: Since then the sadhana as a whole has come down along with us into the physical consciousness. Many have followed — some unluckily without sufﬁcient preparation in the mind and vital, some holding on to the vital and mind and living still between the three, some totally but with a prepared mind and vital. The total descent into the physical is a very troublesome affair — it means a long and trying period of difﬁculty, for the physical is normally obscure, inert, impervious to the Light. It is a thing of habits, very largely a slave of the subconscient and its mechanical reactions. It is less open to violent attacks than the vital except in the way of illness and some other movements, but it is dull and dreary to have these — until the Light, the Peace, the Power, the Joy can come down from above and ﬁx themselves.


Sri Aurobindo: We would have preferred to do all the hard work ourselves there and called others down only when an easier movement was established, but it did not prove possible.  I don’t think it has anything to do with impurity. Only you came down a little too soon. At the moment it happened, the peace and silence of the Atman and the movement upward to realisation of the Self above the head in the higher consciousness were about to establish themselves. If that had been done ﬁrst, it would have been less difﬁcult.


Sri Aurobindo: It means a great struggle against the inertia to get these things done — but you have only to persevere and done they will surely be. Then things will be much more easy for you.   After November the push for descent stopped and the resistance of material Nature arose — that is always a sign of something that has still to be conquered before the descent can be complete.  In the silence the necessary preparation is being done.


Sri Aurobindo: No doubt, I expect something to be done by the 21st, but I say nothing because I do not want to raise the buzz again — it is not good for the realisation that there should be any buzz about it.   Very beastly — these forces. One can’t advance a single step without their throwing their shells and stink-bombs. However like General Joffre, I advance. “Nous progressˆames.


Sri Aurobindo: ”     The period since November has been a general period of difﬁculty and the resistance of the physical Nature to the change demanded of it. That is the reason why there was not the same movement as before November in you, — it is not due to any cause personal to you.


Sri Aurobindo:  No, it is the material which has become too uppish.  Into whose physical? I shall be very glad to know — for I myself have not got so far, otherwise I would not have a queasy eye.  But if you know anybody who has got it (the Supramental in the physical, not the eye) tell me like a shot.


Sri Aurobindo: I will acclaim him “Grand First Supramental” at once.    The greater difﬁculty is because the sadhana is now taking place directly on the physical plane, where the force of a habit or habitual movement once formed is very great. When the sadhana is taking place on the mental or vital plane, it is more easy to control or change, because the mind and vital are more plastic than the physical. But on the other hand if something is deﬁnitely gained on the physical plane, there is a more lasting and complete fulﬁlment than when it is on the mental or vital alone.


Sri Aurobindo:   Achieved what? What statement? What are these wild assertions? I spoke of an overmind Force which is getting supramentalised in parts.


Sri Aurobindo: Overmind in process of supramentalisation, not supramental.  Why not? Always the idea that there must be an instantaneous absolute miracle or else nothing! What about process in things?  You are ignorant of all that is between supreme Spirit and matter, it seems.


Sri Aurobindo: You know nothing of the occult processes of mind, life and all the rest — so you can think only of miraculous divinity or else law of matter as known to Science. But for supramental Spirit to work itself out in matter it must go through a process of transforming the immediate mental, vital and other connections, must it not — so why should not the process be in parts? Immortality also can come by parts. First the mental being becomes immortal (not shed and dissolved after death), then the vital, while the physical comes only last. That is a possible evolution, recognised by occult science.


Sri Aurobindo:    I haven’t — not just now at any rate. I am too busy handling the confounded difﬁculties of Matter. The material is subconscious and I would have to be subconscious myself to get its true intuition.


Sri Aurobindo: I prefer to wait for the supramental.    My insistence on the supramental is of course apo-diaskeptic.  Don’t search for the word in the dictionary. I am simply imitating the doctors who when they are in a hole protect themselves with impossible Greek.


Sri Aurobindo: Peace, supramental if possible, but peace anyhow — a peace which will become supramental if it has a chance. The atmosphere is most confoundedly disturbed, that is why I am ingeminating “peace, peace, peace!” like a summer dove or an intellectual under the rule of Hitler. Of course, I am not asking you to become supramental offhand. That is my business, and I will do it if you fellows give me a chance, which you are not doing just now (you is not personal, but collective and indeﬁnite) and will do less if you go blummering into buzziﬁc intensities. (Please consult the dictionary, but look into the writings of Joyce and others.)


Sri Aurobindo:  I presume it will come anyhow, but it is badly delayed because, if I am all the time occupied with dramas, hysterics, tragi-comic correspondence (quarrels, chronicles, lamentations), how can I have time for this — the only real work, the one thing needful?  It is not one or two, but twenty dramas that are going on.    One day, one week, one month, one year, one decade, one century, one millennium, one light year — all is possible.


Sri Aurobindo: Then why do people choose one century?     It would be very natural if Mother felt like that! Never has there been such an uprush of mud and brimstone as during the past few months.


Sri Aurobindo: However the Caravan goes on and today there was some promise of better things.    In a certain sense it is true, but it was not inevitable — if the sadhaks had been a less neurotic company, it could have been done quietly. As it is there is the Revolt of the Subconscient.  When I said “out of date”, I did not mean that they are not going on, but they ought not to be going on — they were only kept up by the sadhaks opening themselves to them and so retaining them in the atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: I thought that was clear from what I said — but the sadhaks seem always to put a comfortable interpretation even on uncomfortable statements.  There are only 2 or 3 in the Asram to whom this word “even” would apply. I won’t mention their names less the devil should be tempted to try with them also. A solid mind, a solid nervous system and a steady psychic ﬂame seem to be the only safeguard against “terrible attacks”.  If such things did not happen, there would be no need of a ﬁght day and night.


Sri Aurobindo: You put the thing in an inverse order. (I take no responsibility for the statements you make, of course. They stand on the credit of the reporters.)  How? I am not Hitler.


Sri Aurobindo: Things cannot be done like that. You might just as well ask the Mother and myself to isolate ourselves in the Himalayas, get down the supramental, then toss everybody up in a blanket into the Supreme. Very neat but it is not practical.


Sri Aurobindo: The subconscient difﬁculty is difﬁculty now — because the whole struggle in the general sadhana is now there. It is in the subconscient, no longer in the vital or conscious physical that the resistance is all massed together.   The main difﬁculty in the general sadhana also is now in the physical. From November last there has been much struggle and obstruction on the most physical plane — the material consciousness.   ???


Sri Aurobindo: Great Heavens! which? who? But there is nothing new in that. It was coming down before Nov. 24, but afterwards all the damned mud arose and it stopped.


Sri Aurobindo: But there are two redcrimson lights. One is supramental Divine Love. The other is the supramental physical Force.    It is probable that you have come in contact with a new layer of the physical consciousness which is more material than the rest, perhaps with the subconscient itself (it is with the subconscient that the sadhana is now concerned in the Asram itself).


Sri Aurobindo: The ﬁrst result is the purely negative or stand-still condition you describe.  You have to call down the Force and the Light here, so that this too may become a part of the Divine Consciousness. If it is the subconscient, then you must be on your guard against all negative feelings such as the sense that all is gone, or the uselessness of life or the frustration or uselessness of sadhana, helplessness, incapacity etc. These things come naturally to one who does not understand. But they are false appearances.


Sri Aurobindo: Remaining quiet and keeping the faith that there is the Divine Guidance behind, one has to do what is needed till the phase is over.    No, thank you, sir! I have had enough of them — the only result of the last descent was an upsurging of subconscient mud.  What an appetite for crashes!


Sri Aurobindo: No pressure! I am simply busy trying to get out of the mud — in other words to see if the damned subconscient can be persuaded to subside into something less dangerous, less complexful and more manageable.     The “Pressure” from above does not work to send people away — it is the pressure of the wrong forces.


Sri Aurobindo: As for sifting, that is an idea which is very widespread; — but what is meant by sifting?  Were the people who have gone out the most unﬁt for Yoga and are those who remain the ones ﬁt for Yoga — is that the idea? I don’t think anybody could make the facts work out to mean that.  Then what is the idea? It is true that this has been a very difﬁcult time, but that is only because the sadhana has proceeded by a descent into a lower and lower plane where the forces of Darkness are more and more at home, and it is now in the subconscient where lies the root of all the difﬁculties.


Sri Aurobindo: But on the other hand the Power descending also is greater. If many people have gone and many are having great difﬁculties, also many have opened to experience and progress who were stagnant for years together.  There is a loss account but a gain account also.    Subconscient vital physical — the lower vital is irrational, but not so utterly “without reason” as that.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is still there, but personally I have become superior to it and am travelling forward like a ﬂash of lightning, that is to say, zigzag, but fairly fast. Now I have got the hang of the whole hanged thing — like a very Einstein I have got the mathematical formula of the whole affair (unintelligible as in his case to anybody but myself) and am working it out ﬁgure by ﬁgure.


Sri Aurobindo: As for people, no! they are not ﬂoating in the supramental — some are ﬂoating in the higher mind, others rushing up into it and ﬂopping down into the subconscient alternately, some swinging from heaven into hell and back into heaven, again back into hell ad inﬁnitum, some are sticking fast contentedly or discontentedly in the mud, some are sitting in the mud and dreaming dreams and seeing visions, some have their legs in the mud and their head in the heavens, etc. etc., an inﬁnity of combinations, while many are simply nowhere. But console yourself — these things, it seems, are inevitable in the process of great transformations.


Sri Aurobindo: [ ]   Rubbish !


Sri Aurobindo: If my being able to solve the problem of the subconscient in the sadhana is of no importance, then of course it won’t affect anybody. Otherwise it may.  That is of no importance at present. To get the closed doors open is just now the thing to be done and I am doing it. Speeding people through them can come in its own time when the doors and the people are ready.


Sri Aurobindo: I told you it was unintelligible to anybody but myself, so how the deuce do you expect me to give it to you in a tangible form?     No — only you must not tell it to too many people. It is only because I don’t want speculation or gossip about such things as that spoils the atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is always an adverse movement after the darshan, the  of the lower forces. I had a stoppage myself, but I am off again riding on the back of my Einsteinian formula.


Sri Aurobindo:   You have created your own “bewildering problem” by supplying your own data! There is nothing nebulous about the supramental, its action depends on the utmost precision possible. As for solidity, since I have got many solid things from much lower forces, I do not see why the highest ones should only give nebulosities. But that seems the human mind’s position, only what is earthy is solid, what is high is misty and unreal — the worm is a reality, but the eagle is a vapour!


Sri Aurobindo: However, I have not told that I am scaling and winging — on the contrary I am dealing with very hard practical facts. I only told him I had got the formula of solution for the difﬁculty that had been holding me up since last November and I am working it out.  To return to the supramental — the supramental is simply the direct self-existent Truth-Consciousness and the direct selfeffective Truth-Power. There can therefore be no question of jugglery about it. What is not true is not supramental.


Sri Aurobindo: As for calm and silence, there is no need of the supramental to get that.  One can get it even on the level of Higher Mind which is the next above the human intelligence. I got these things in 1908, twentyseven years ago and I can assure you they were solid enough and marvellous enough without any need of supramentality to make it more so! Again, a calm that “seems like motion” is a phenomenon of which I know nothing. A calm or silence which can support or produce action — that I know and that is what I have had — the proof is that out of an absolute silence of the mind I edited the for four months and wrote 6 volumes of the, not to speak of all the letters and messages etc. etc. I have written since.


Sri Aurobindo: If you say that writing is not an action or motion but only something that seems like it, a jugglery of the consciousness, — well, still out of that calm and silence I conducted a pretty strenuous political activity and have also taken my share in keeping up an Asram which has at least an appearance to the physical senses of being solid and material!  If you deny that these things are material or solid (which of course metaphysically you can), then you land yourself plump into Shankara’s illusionism, and there I will leave you.  You will say however that it is not the Supramental but at most the Overmind that helped me to these non-nebulous motions. But the Supermind is by deﬁnition a greater dynamic activity than mind or Overmind. I have said that what is not true is not supramental; I will add that what is ineffective is not supramental.


Sri Aurobindo: And ﬁnally I will conclude by saying that I have not told that I have taken possession of the supramental — I only admit to be very near to it or at least to its tail. But “very near” is — well, after all a relative phrase like all human phrases.  I don’t know how you are to “gag”. You might perhaps try my two formulas, but it is doubtful. Or perhaps you might tell him that the supramental is silence — only, it would be untrue!


Sri Aurobindo: So I leave you in your ﬁx — there is no other go. At least until I have ﬁrm physical hold of the tail of the supramental and can come and tell the mentals and humans — no doubt in language which will be unintelligible to them, for they have totally misunderstood even the little I have already written about it.    Yes — it is a natural result of the consciousness’s descent into the physical and the struggle with the subconscient resistance.  Only its form varies with different people.


Sri Aurobindo:   It happened in the same way with myself. I had to come down into the physical to deal with it instead of keeping the station always above. Of course if you can keep the station above so much the better, but as almost everybody is down in the physical, it is a little difﬁcult perhaps.


Sri Aurobindo:   I suppose so. Only that must not be accepted as a reason for passive acquiescence.


Sri Aurobindo:   That cannot be said. The difﬁculties are not likely to cease until the material resistance has been entirely conquered in principle.    [ ] Not quite correct in all points.


Sri Aurobindo: The things to be brought down were in us no doubt — but not all outwardly manifested, from the beginning. Of course’s statement is altogether true only as far as the bracket goes.     Yes, of course.


Sri Aurobindo: What is being done is meant to prepare the manifestation of the supermind in the earth consciousness down to Matter itself, so it can’t be for the physical of myself or the Mother alone.  If it comes down into our physical it would mean that it has come down into matter and so there is no reason why it should not manifest in the sadhaks.  I do not know to what passage of the the reference is. It is certain that the Supermind is far above the human mind and cannot be grasped by the human mind. That is the reason why this Yoga has to be undertaken — so as to make man grow out of the human mind and prepare him for supermind.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know that I have “called” myself a superman. But certainly I have risen above the ordinary human mind, otherwise I would not think of trying to bring down the supermind into the physical.  That is another matter. The supermind plane is a plane above, its nature is not yet manifested in the material world, which has manifested matter, life and mind, and something of what is between mind and supermind, but not supermind itself.


Sri Aurobindo: No. It was the old idea that human consciousness can reach and merge in the Sun (Supermind) — by Samadhi, I suppose — but cannot redescend from there.     I do not remember having written “in principle” or if so, there must have been other words also.


Sri Aurobindo: I am not aware that they or anybody lives constantly on the intuitive plane. All are at grips with the difﬁculties of the physical consciousness at present — though of course to one like the suggestion of revolt cannot come — at least it has never done so up to now.    I see, but that was about another matter altogether. I meant that the difﬁculties in the physical (generally speaking, not in a particular case) could not be entirely absent so long as the material resistance to the supramental descent had not been overcome in principle.


Sri Aurobindo: In principle means in essence, not in every detail of the coming development.     Direct Supermind Force is not possible at this stage. It is only when the whole being down to the physical has accepted and assimilated the higher consciousness that it can come.


Sri Aurobindo: Complete perfection is another matter. What must ﬁrst be done is the fullness of the higher consciousness between the mind and supermind.    Acting in the Asram means only acting in the earth consciousness to prepare its own possibility. The forces above the human mind, especially Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind can be very intense and ﬁery.


Sri Aurobindo: They have divine powers in them.    But supposing I reached supermind in that way, then under such conditions would it be probable that I should come down again at the risk of losing it? Do you realise that I went upstairs and have not come down again? So it was better to be in contact with it until I had made the path clear between S and M.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the tail, can’t you approach the tail of an animal without achieving the animal? I am in the physical, in matter — there is no doubt of it. If I throw a rope up from Matter, noose or lasso the Supermind and pull it down, the ﬁrst part of Mr. S that will come near me is his tail dangling down as he descends, and that I can seize ﬁrst and pull down the rest of him by tail-twists. As for being in contact with it, well I can be in contact with you by correspondence without actually touching you or taking hold even of your tail, can’t I? So there is nothing funny about it — perfectly rational, coherent and clear.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you expect to become supramental overnight, you are confoundedly mistaken. The tail will keep the H.F. [] at a respectful distance and ﬂap at you until you consent to do things in a reasonable time instead of taking 200 centuries over each step as you seem to want to do just now. More than that I refuse to say.


Sri Aurobindo: What is a reasonable time in the supramental view of things I leave you to discover.  Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the individual — including his freedom to be perverse, stupid, recalcitrant and slow.  Supermind is not merely a step higher than Overmind — it is beyond the line, that is a different consciousness and power beyond the mental limit.


Sri Aurobindo: We are sending nobody nowhere. The sadhana itself has come down into the depth of the physical and subconscient to make them open to what has to come down from above. That is all.  It is true, unless they are so surrendered to the Mother, so psychic, plastic, free from ego that the difﬁculties are spared to them.


Sri Aurobindo:   What’s the use? How much would anybody understand? Besides the present business is to bring down and establish the Supermind, not to explain it. If it establishes itself, it will explain itself — if it doesn’t, there is no use in explaining it.


Sri Aurobindo: I have said some things about it in past writings, but without success in enlightening anybody. So why repeat the endeavour?    Not of the descent, but of the resistance to it.  The general descent of the Supermind into Matter was the subject on which I was writing.


Sri Aurobindo:   There can be no conquest of the other planes by the supermind, but only an inﬂuence, so long as the physical is not ready. Besides the Supermind did not attempt — it is we who are attempting.  And how is it possible to perfect the mind and vital unless the physical is prepared — for there is such a thing as the mental and vital physical and mind and vital cannot be said to be perfectly prepared until these are ready.


Sri Aurobindo: That is hardly possible. The body consciousness is there and cannot be ignored, so that one can neither transform the higher parts completely leaving the body for later dealing nor make each stage complete in all its parts before going to the next. I tried that method but it never worked. A predominant overmentalisation of mind and vital is the ﬁrst step, for instance, when overmentalising, but the body consciousness retains all the lower movements unovermentalised and until these can be pulled up to the overmental standard, there is no overmental perfection,  always the body consciousness brings in ﬂaws and limitations.


Sri Aurobindo: To perfect the overmind one has to call in the supramental force and it is only when the overmind has been partially supramentalised that the body begins to be more and more overmental. I do not see any way of avoiding this process, though it is what makes the thing so long.    My formula is working out rapidly, but it has nothing to do with any Darshan descent. It is my private and particular descent, if you like, and that’s enough for me at present.


Sri Aurobindo: The tail of the supermind is descending, descending, descending. It is only the tail at present, but where the tail can pass, the rest will follow.  Quiet was all I wanted — there were so many alarums and excursions. Just before that it looked as if the 24th would be a day of mud, whirlpools and tempests (in certain quarters of course). However all quieted down by magic — and everything was peaceful, peaceful.


Sri Aurobindo: How do they know either of them? Personal experience? Then it was a personal descent or a personal non-descent. No General de Bono yet.  Didn’t try, sir, so that’s bosh.


Sri Aurobindo: The attempt to bring a great general descent having only produced a great ascent of subconscient mud, I had given up that as I already told you. At present I am only busy with transformation of overmind (down to the subconscient) into supermind; when that is over, I shall see if I can beat everyone with the tail of the supermind or not.  At present I am only trying to prevent people from making hysterical subconscient asses of themselves, so that I may not be too much disturbed in my operations — not yet with too much success.    Well, it is what I am trying to bring down into the Asram atmosphere, for it is the condition for anything effective being collectively done.


Sri Aurobindo:   The descent of the Silence is not usually associated with sadness, though it does bring a feeling of calm detachment, unconcern and wide emptiness, but in this emptiness there is a sense of ease, freedom, peace. The absorption as if something were drawing deep from within is evidently the pull of the inmost being, the psychic. There is a psychic sadness often when this inmost soul opens and feels how far the nature and the world are from what they should be, but this is a sweet and quiet sorrow, not distressing.


Sri Aurobindo: It must be something in the mind and vital which is not yet awake to what has happened within you and gives this colour of dissatisﬁed and distressed seeking.  You have certainly made a great progress since you came and there is no reason to fear any setback of the sadhana.  I don’t think you need attach any value to what professes to think about the supramental. The descent of the supramental is an inevitable necessity in the logic of things and is therefore sure. It is because people do not understand what the supermind is or realise the signiﬁcance of the emergence of consciousness in a world of “inconscient” Matter that they are unable to realise this inevitability.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose a matter-of-fact observer if there had been one at the time of the unrelieved reign of inanimate Matter in the earth’s beginning would have criticised any promise of the emergence of life in a world of dead earth and rock and mineral as an absurdity and a chimaera; so too afterwards he would have repeated his mistake and regarded the emergence of thought and reason in an animal world as an absurdity and a chimaera.  It is the same now with the appearance of supermind in the stumbling mentality of this world of human consciousness and its reasoning ignorance. I do not know that the descent depends on the readiness of the sadhaks of this Asram. It is likely that these things are determined from above rather than from below.  That the descent is preparing and progressing is a fact; it is that which you feel and are justiﬁed in feeling.


Sri Aurobindo: A certain inertia, tendency to sleep, indolence, unwillingness or inability to be strong for work or spiritual effort for long at a time, is in the nature of the human physical consciousness.  When one goes down into the physical for its change (that has been the general condition here for a long time), this tends to increase. Even sometimes when the pressure of the sadhana in the physical increases or when one has to go much inside, this temporarily increases — the body either needing more rest or turning the inward movement into a tendency to sleep or be at rest. You need not, however, be anxious about that. After a time this rights itself; the physical consciousness gets the true peace and calm in the cells and feels at rest even in full work or in the most concentrated condition and this tendency of inertia goes out of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:    Why not 1623? or since the beginning of the evolution?


Sri Aurobindo: But who said that I started in 1923? The aim of bringing down the supramental was there long before. The effort to bring it down into the physical is on the contrary quite recent, during the last few years only.


Sri Aurobindo: They descended long ago. It does not mean that they are available to everybody or developed anywhere in their full power — only that they can be counted among the things to which one can reach by tapasya. For Supermind, it may be descending, but it may take long before it is available to the race.    Of course.


Sri Aurobindo: Coming down as fast as you fellows will allow.  Tell him I have grown chary of remarks. Remarks frighten the Sm. T.


Sri Aurobindo: I shall see what can be done [].  For some time however it has been difﬁcult for me to put myself to any sustained intellectual work, because I am strongly taken up by a push to ﬁnish inwardly in myself what remained to be done in the way of transformation of the consciousness and, though this part of it is terribly difﬁcult and arduous, I was making so unexpected a progress that the consciousness was unwilling to turn away from it to anything else. So much hangs on this, the decisive victory, the power to remove the difﬁculties of others as well as my own (those that are still there, physical and other) that I was pushing for it like Mussolini for Addis Ababa before the rains. However, any night when there is a lull, I will see.


Sri Aurobindo:  No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy, I wish it were.  It is rather with the opposite end of things — in the Abyss that I have to plunge to build a bridge between the two. But that too is necessary for my work and one has to face it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not a question of descent. We are nurturing the Force and it grows necessarily stronger and has more effect.     The last Darshan was good on the whole.


Sri Aurobindo: I am not now trying to bring anything sensational down on these days, but I am watching the progress in the action of the Force and Consciousness that are already there, the inﬁltration of a greater Light and Power from above, and there was a very satisfactory crossing of a difﬁcult border which promises well for the near future. A thing has been done which had long failed to accomplish itself and which is of great importance. I don’t explain now, because it forms part of an arranged whole which is explicable only when it is complete. But it gives a sort of strong practical assurance that the thing will be done.   All in the Asram are not suffering from the sense of dullness and want of interest, but many are because the Force that is descending is discouraging the old movements of the physical and vital mind which they call life and they are not accustomed to accept the renunciation of these things, or to admit the peace or joy of silence.


Sri Aurobindo:   That’s what the Force seems to be trying to do.  30 years too little or too many? What would have satisﬁed your rational mind — 3 years?


Sri Aurobindo: 3 months? 3 weeks? Considering that by ordinary evolution it could not have been done even at Nature’s express speed in less than 3000 years, and would ordinarily have taken anything from 30,000 to 300,000, the transit of 30 years is perhaps not too slow.    That is of course a symbol of triumph.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that a Force came down full of an intense white light which the Mother had never known to come down before and it seemed to have a supramental authority. Your feeling therefore was probably right.    The experience you had was a true one, for something came down at that meditation which had not come down before  and your experience was a translation of this descent in your consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: That you should have become aware of it in this way shows that your stay here has been very proﬁtable to you and prepared your consciousness for the true realisation. The capacity for it is now there in you. Your future sadhana should be a development from the experience to the realisation.


Sri Aurobindo: Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like a gold crown on a pig’s head — won’t do.  Picturesque perhaps, but —    The awakening in the subconscient is now the great and urgent necessity and it is that for which I am pressing most.


Sri Aurobindo: The story of the occultist contains a truth, and it would be a mistake to suppose that there is no connection between the pressure here and outside happenings. But I don’t know about particular coincidences. The departure of and does not seem easily relatable to the event in Abyssinia.


Sri Aurobindo: It is due to the fact that there have been for some time much struggle and tense conditions in the forces working in the Asram and your stay here would not be proﬁtable to you at the moment.  I think your sense feel has been indulging in vain imaginations, perhaps with the idea of increasing your concrete imaginative faculty and ﬁtting you for understanding the unintelligible. Anyhow disburden your soul of the weight. I am not owled yet, and my supramentalisation is going on too slowly to justify such apprehensions. Neither am I withdrawing, rather ﬁtting myself for a new rush in the near or far future.


Sri Aurobindo: So cheer up and send the Man of Sorrows with his planks to the devil.    Romantic one! I am not soaring and soaring — I am digging and digging. “Go to the ant, thou sluggard” sort of affair.


Sri Aurobindo:   Tail is there — but no use without the head.  No doubt. Also in this atmosphere pretences and social lies are difﬁcult to maintain.


Sri Aurobindo: But if things become prominent, it is that people may see and reject them. If instead they cling to them as their most cherished possessions, what is the use? How is the purging to be done with such an attitude?


Sri Aurobindo: You need not be afraid of losing anything great by postponing your return to Pondicherry. A general descent of the kind you speak of is not in view at the moment and even if it comes, it can very easily catch you up into itself whenever you come if you are in the right openness; and if you are not, then even its descending would not be of so urgent an importance, since it would take you some time to become aware of it or receive it.   So there is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors.


Sri Aurobindo: What has Supermind to do with Hitler or Hitler with Supermind? Do you expect the Supermind to aviate to Berchtesgaden?  How the devil can they gunﬁre S; their aeroplanes can’t even reach Pondicherry, much less the Supermind. The descent of S depends on S, not on Hitler or no Hitler.  There is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afﬂicts the sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now and for a long time past come down to the Inconscient; the pressure, the call is to change in that part of the nature which depends directly on the Inconscient, the ﬁxed habits, the automatic movements, the mechanical repetitions of the nature, the involuntary reactions to life, all that seems to belong to the ﬁxed character of a man. This has to be done if there is to be any chance of a total spiritual change. The Force (generally and not individually) is working to make that possible, its pressure is for that, — for, on the other levels, the change has already been made possible (not, mind you, assured to everybody). But to open the Inconscient to light is a herculean task; change on the other levels is much easier. As yet this work has only begun and it is not surprising that there seems to be no change in things or people.


Sri Aurobindo: It will come in time, but not in a hurry.  As for experiences, they are all right but the trouble is that they do not seem to change the nature, they only enrich the consciousness — even the realisation, on the mind level, of the Brahman seems to leave the nature almost where it was, except for a few. That is why we insist on the psychic transformation as the ﬁrst necessity — for that does change the nature — and its chief instrument is bhakti, surrender, etc.   I have explained to you why so many people (not by any means all) are in this gloomy condition, dull and despondent. It is the tamas, the inertia of the Inconscient, that has got hold of them.


Sri Aurobindo: But also it is the small physical vital which takes only an interest in the small and trivial things of the ordinary daily and social life and nothing else. When formerly the sadhana was going on on higher levels (mind, higher vital etc.), there was plenty of vigour and verve and interest in the details of the Asram work and life as well as in an inner life; the physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisﬁed vital physical and ﬁnd everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue. In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottleneck and they do not ﬁnd any way out. If one can keep the right condition and attitude, a strong interest in work or a strong interest in sadhana, then this becomes quiescent.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the malady. Its remedy is to keep the right condition and to bring gradually or, if one can, swiftly the light of the higher aspiration into this part of the being also, so that whatever the conditions of the environment, it may keep also the right poise. Then the sunlit path should be less impossible.  I have no intention, I can assure you, of cutting off connection in the future. What restrictions there have been, were due to unavoidable causes.


Sri Aurobindo: My retirement itself was indispensable; otherwise I would not now be where I am, that is, personally near the goal. When the goal is reached, things will be different. But as far as you are concerned, I have given to you what I have not given to others; what you have quoted about my connection with you is perfectly true; if it were false, why should I have persistently pressed you to remain with me always? Inwardly, I have been constant in my desire and my effort to help you, not only from time to time, but daily and always. If you had an unprecedented peace for so long a time, it was due to my persistent inner pressure; I refuse to give up all the credit to my double, Krishna.


Sri Aurobindo: The extreme acuteness of your difﬁculties is due to the yoga having come down against the bedrock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difﬁculties themselves are general in the Ashram as well as in the outside world. Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a bafﬂing of the hope for the future are the common features of the difﬁculty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure to the exclusion of higher things and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared.


Sri Aurobindo: I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the ﬁrst signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand ﬁrm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.


Sri Aurobindo: If I had been standing on the Supermind level and acting on the world by the instrumentation of Supermind, that world would have changed or would be changing much more rapidly and in a different fashion from what is happening now. My present effort is not to stand up on a high and distant Supermind level and change the world from there, but to bring something of it down here and to stand on that and act by that, but at the present stage the progressive supramentalisation of the Overmind is the ﬁrst immediate preoccupation and a second is the lightening of the heavy resistance of the Inconscient and the support it gives to human ignorance which is always the main obstacle in any attempt to change the world or even to change oneself.  I have always said that the spiritual force I have been putting on human affairs such as the War is not the supramental but the overmind force, and that when it acts in the material world it is so inextricably mixed up in the tangle of the lower world forces that its results, however strong or however adequate for the immediate object, must necessarily be partial. That is why I am getting a birthday present of a free India on August 15, but complicated by its being presented in two packets as two free Indias: this is a generosity I could have done without, one free India would have been enough for me if offered as an unbroken whole.  I suppose all spiritual or inner experiences can be denounced as merely subjective and delusive.


Sri Aurobindo: But to the spiritual seeker even the smallest inner experience is a thing of value. I stand for the Truth I hold in me and I would still stand for it even if it had no chance whatever of outward fulﬁlment in this life. I should go on with it even if all here abandoned and repudiated me and denounced it to the world as a delusion and a folly. I have never disguised from myself the difﬁculties of what I have undertaken, it is not difﬁculties or the threat of failure that can deter me.  That is to say, the Power is still working on the physical consciousness (the mechanical mind and the subconscient) to bring stillness there.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes the stillness comes but not complete, sometimes the mechanical mind reasserts itself. This oscillation usually takes place in a movement of the kind. Even if there is a sudden or rapid transforming shock or downrush, there has to be some working out of this kind afterwards — that at least has always been my experience. For most, however, there comes, ﬁrst, this slow preparatory process.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not at all agree about the unﬁtness. When you came here ﬁrst you were too raw still, but since then you have developed much and, whatever difﬁculties may remain, it cannot be said that the ground is not there! I do not quite understand what you mean by the pressure, but if you mean the pressure of the universal forces, sex, anger etc., it is always under that pressure that the recurrences occur. There is nothing new or peculiar in that which would justify a conclusion of individual unﬁtness.


Sri Aurobindo: These things have also often a periodicity in them which helps them to recur  and the up and down movement is characteristic of the course followed by the nature in the sadhana which I myself felt for many years together. It is only after one reaches a certain height that one gets rid of it or rather it changes into an oscillation the reason and utility of which one can understand. Until that happens one has to go on and the one thing one must avoid is this feeling of despondency and self-distrust. If one perseveres, the ﬁnal success is sure.


Sri Aurobindo:   I hope that you will soon acquire the faith and patience for which you aspire and that the oscillations cease. For me the path of Yoga has always been a battle as well as a journey, a thing of ups and downs, of light followed by darkness followed by a greater light — but nobody is better pleased than myself when a disciple can arrive out of all that to the smooth and clear path which the human physical mind quite rightly yearns for.  The worst thing for sadhana is to get into a morbid condition, always thinking of “lower forces, attacks etc.” If the sadhana has stopped for a time, then let it stop, remain quiet, do ordinary things, rest when rest is needed — wait till the physical consciousness is ready.


Sri Aurobindo: My own sadhana when it was far more advanced than yours used to stop for half a year together. I did not make a fuss about it, but remained quiet till the empty or dull period was over.   By calling down the Descent, since the Ascent is impossible. At least that is how I dealt with the situation in my own case.


Sri Aurobindo:   If so then there is no need of any other force than the sadhak’s own. My own experience is different, that the sadhana very often does refuse to go on except under certain conditions or until those conditions are realised. But yours may be different.


Sri Aurobindo:   I quite understand; often had it myself devastatingly. That’s why I always advise people who have it to cheer up and buck up.  To cheer up, buck up and the rest if you can, saying “Rome was not built in a day” — if you can’t, gloom it through till the sun rises and the little birds chirp and all is well.  Looks however as if you were going through a training in vairagya.


Sri Aurobindo: Don’t much care for vairagya myself — always avoided the beastly thing, but had to go through it partly, till I hit on samata as a better trick. But samata is difﬁcult, vairagya is easy, only damnably gloomy and uncomfortable.     Everybody drops.


Sri Aurobindo: I have dropped myself thousands of times during the sadhana. What roseleaf-princess sadhaks you all are!  It can be done, — but I should have to write an essay on the Intuition to make any explanation intelligible.  It can or it may not. Why did not everything open up in me like the painting vision and some other things?


Sri Aurobindo: All did not. As I told you I had to plod in many things. Otherwise the affair would not have taken so many years (30). In this Yoga one can’t always take a short cut in everything. I had to work on each problem and on each conscious plane to solve or to transform and in each I had to take the blessed conditions as they were and do honest work without resorting to miracles.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course if the consciousness grows all of itself, it is all right, things will come with the growth, but not even then pell-mell in an easy gallop.    None, before I took up Yoga.  No, I did not say nothing comes in an easy gallop. Some things do.


Sri Aurobindo: But one can’t count on that as a rule.  I don’t ﬁnd it a noble voice at all, it is the voice of the usual defeatist suggester using any and every reasoning to instil weakness, ﬂight and self-destruction. There is no strong reasoning, either, it is the usual round of sophistries always the same and repeated to every sadhak in turn. “Give up, give up, give up!  run, run, run!


Sri Aurobindo: die, die, say die, say die.” That is always the substance of it, the rest is only skin and shell to give it a good presentation. I don’t reason with the creature; you may reason like Socrates and be as convincing as the Buddha, but after a little it will soon come back and sing the same song over again.  It pretends to reason, but doesn’t care a damn for either truth or reason — I know too well the ways of the fellow — I have paid heavily to know. In my own sadhana I have heard his chant of death a million times and several hundreds of times from this or that sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: So I simply refuse to listen to him and I advise you to do the same.    There is no reason to think that the movement of strength and purity was a make-believe. No, it was a real thing. But with these strong forward movements the vital enthusiasm often comes in with a triumphant “Now it is ﬁnished”, which is not quite justiﬁed, for “Now it will soon be ﬁnished” would be nearer to it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is at these moments that the thrice-damned Censor comes in with a jog, raises up a still shaky bit of the nature and produces a result that is out of all proportion to the size of the little bit, just to show that it is not ﬁnished. I have had any number of times that experience myself. All this comes from the complexity and slowness of our evolutionary nature which Yoga quickens but not as a whole at a stroke. But in fact, as I said, these crises are out of all proportion to their cause in the nature. One must therefore not be discouraged, but see the exaggeration in the adversary’s successful negation as well as the exaggeration in our own idea of a complete and deﬁnitive victory already there.


Sri Aurobindo: Fits of despair and darkness are a tradition in the path of sadhana — in all Yogas oriental and occidental they seem to have been the rule. I know all about them myself — but my experience has led me to the perception that they are an unnecessary tradition and could be dispensed with if one chose. That is why whenever they come in you or others I try to lift up before them the gospel of faith. If still they come, one has only to get through them as soon as possible and get back into the sun.  The exacerbation of certain vital movements is a perfectly wellknown phenomenon in Yoga and does not mean that one has degenerated, but only that one has come to close grips instead of to a pleasant nodding acquaintance with the basic instincts of the earthly vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: I have had myself the experience of this rising to a height, during a certain stage of the spiritual development, of things that before hardly existed and seemed quite absent in the pre-Yogic life. These things rise up like that because they are ﬁghting for their existence — they are not really personal to you and the vehemence of their attack is not due to any “badness” in the personal nature. I dare say seven sadhaks out of ten have a similar experience. Afterwards when they cannot effect their object, which is to drive the sadhak out of his sadhana, the whole thing sinks and there is no longer any vehement trouble. I repeat that the only serious thing about it is the depression created in you and the idea of inability in the yoga that they take care to impress on the brain when they are at their work.


Sri Aurobindo: If you can get rid of that, the violence of the vital attacks is only the phenomenon of a stage and does not in the end matter.    There is nothing peculiar about retrogression. I was also noted in my earlier time before Yoga for the rareness of anger. At a certain period of the Yoga it rose in me like a volcano, and I had to take a long time eliminating it.


Sri Aurobindo: As for sex — well. You are always thinking that the things that are happening to you are unique and nobody else ever had such trials or downfalls or misery before.     I was speaking of a past phase.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know about subconscient, must have come from universal Nature.    The supramental (even its tail) does not take away any capacity, but rather sublimates all and gives those that were not there. So I gave a sublimated supramental shout. I freely admit that (apart from the public platform) I have shouted only four or ﬁve times in my life.


Sri Aurobindo: I cannot believe that the soul in you can be broken to pieces and, so long as that is there, it is always possible to recover. It must be something in the surface consciousness that is feeling like that.  But from that it is perfectly possible to arise, even though it may seem difﬁcult or impossible at the time. Nor can I see why there should be this devastating sense of humiliation because of an adverse movement that some of the greatest Yogis have passed through, not to speak of myself in my earlier days or some of the most forceful sadhaks here. One gets caught unawares and thrown down and feels broken — but after a time the shock passes and one gets up and pursues the Way — till one reaches the “straight and thornless path where there is no more wall or obstacle”.


Sri Aurobindo: What you are experiencing is the condition which comes when the whole consciousness has come down into the physical — with the object of bringing down the higher consciousness into the external nature. At ﬁrst there seems to be the external nature only with a tendency to more peace and quiet than before, but no new positive experience. The ﬁrst thing the physical consciousness is worked on to acquire is quiet, peace and equanimity as a basis for other things — but what comes is a tendency to neutral quiet which looks like inertia with occasional peace and silence.  What is necessary is to bring down peace and silence and a strong equanimity within into the external nature and the very cells of the body. But the difﬁculty is that the physical nature has little tendency to aspiration, its habit is to wait for the higher forces to do their work and remain passive.


Sri Aurobindo: I think it is this difﬁculty that you are feeling. I felt it myself very often and for long periods at that stage of the sadhana. A steady development of the habit of a very quiet but persistent tapasya in the form of a quiet concentration of will to progress could be very helpful at this stage.    There was certainly a real sadhana then and a very persistent preparation on the mental and vital planes.


Sri Aurobindo: If there had not been, the descents of peace would not have begun. The fall came because when you descended into the physical consciousness to complete the preparation there, you became too passive, not continuing your will of tapasya, with the result that this sex force took advantage of the inertia of the physical consciousness to assert itself fully. That kind of passivity to the forces comes upon many when there is the descent into the physical; one then feels different forces playing in the consciousness without having the same power of reaction as one had in the mind and the vital — sometimes peace etc. from above, sometimes disturbing forces.  I had to pass through the same stage myself and it took me 2 years at least to get out of it. To develop in the physical itself a constant will for the drawing down of the higher consciousness — especially the Peace and Force from above, is the best way out of it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is sometimes a little difﬁcult to say whether it is silence or the physical’s translation of the silence into a kind of inertia. I have experienced that very often in the rather difﬁcult task of turning the into, physical into spiritual rest and peace which is its divine counterpart.  You can try. I used to feel dizziness at one time for months together, but it never prevented me from walking or doing my work — but for that you must have a consciousness which observes the dizziness and is not lost in it.


Sri Aurobindo:   Giddiness can come from many causes. I used to walk about for hours with my head going round or going up in a most exhilarating way. It gave me a perverse Ananda but did not inconvenience me otherwise.  I don’t think so — it is probably old impressions from the subconscient material (not vital — therefore a memory rather than a desire) rising up in sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: I remember a time when I was always seeing dishes of food even though I did not care a hang about food at the time.    Dreams of this kind can last for years and years after the waking consciousness has ceased to interest itself in things of that kind.  The subconscient is exceedingly obstinate in the keeping of its old impressions. I ﬁnd myself even recently having a dream of revolutionary activities or another in which the Maharaja of Baroda butted in, people and things I have not even thought of passingly for the last twenty years almost.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose it is because the very business of the subconscient in the human psychology is to keep all the past inside it and, being without conscious mentality, it clings to its ofﬁce until the light has fully come down into it, illumining even its corners and crevices.    I suppose it acts differently with different natures. Some beneﬁt greatly by not writing; after a time they lose all contact with the old life. There are others who go on thinking and dreaming of relatives, old places and scenes, old faces etc. etc.; others dream of these things half the night although in the daytime they never think of them.


Sri Aurobindo: I myself found myself sometimes (not so long ago) dreaming of the Gaekwar and even now sometimes Barin turns up in a most unexpected way. The impressions of the subconscient fade out very slowly. But all the same I think not renewing them does help. I am not so sure about the solidity of the persons you speak of — I know that in some cases it keeps up old attachments and prevents the physical consciousness from being free as it would have been otherwise.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother says she has no objection to your reading French during the work time.  I should say however that if you could divide your attention between the reading and sadhana-thought and concentration more, it might be better from the point of view you mention.  I mean that there should be sufﬁcient concentration to create in your mind a sadhana atmosphere which you can bring up to the surface as soon as you leave reading or whenever it is needed to set right an invading movement. Otherwise the subconscient forces have free play and gain power. Besides the condition becomes subconscient, i.e. inert and like a drift.


Sri Aurobindo: At least that is what I have seen recently in my dealings with my own subconscient, so I pass on the hint to you.  Yes , of course, I remember about Baroda Babu — I can’t say I remember him because I never saw him, at least in the ﬂesh.  What he probably means by the Supramental is the Above Mind — what I now call Illumined Mind–Intuition–Overmind. I used to make that confusion myself at the beginning.


Sri Aurobindo: There is not enough to go upon to say whether he really sees the Mother or an image of her is reﬂected in his own mind. But there is nothing extraordinary, much less impossible in seeing a person whom one has never seen — you are thinking as if the inner mind and sense, the inner vision were limited by the outer mind and sense, the outer vision, or were a mere reﬂection of that. There would be not much use in an inner mind and sense and vision if they were only that and nothing more. This faculty is one of the elementary powers of the inner sense and inner seeing and not only Yogins have it, but ordinary clairvoyants, crystal-gazers etc. The latter can see people they never knew, saw or heard of before, doing certain precise things in certain very precise surroundings, and every detail of the vision is conﬁrmed afterwards by the persons seen — there are many striking and indubitable cases of that kind.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother is always seeing people whom she does not know; some afterwards come here or their photographs come here. I myself have these visions, only I don’t usually try to remember or verify them. But there were two curious instances which were among the ﬁrst of their kind and which therefore I remember. Once I was trying to see a recently elected deputy here and saw someone quite different from him, someone who afterwards came here as Governor. I ought never to have met him in the ordinary course, but a curious mistake happened and as a result I went and saw him in his bureau and at once recognised him.


Sri Aurobindo: The other was a certain V. Ramaswamy whom I had to meet, but I saw him not as he was when he actually came, but as he became after a year’s residence in my house. He became the very image of that vision, a face closecropped, rough, rude, energetic, the very opposite of the dreamy smooth-faced enthusiastic Vaishnava who came to me. So that was the vision of a man I had never seen, but as he was to be in the future — a prophetic vision.  These stone-throwing or stone-producing incidents and similar extraordinary occurrences which go outside the ordinary course of physical Nature happen frequently in India and are not unknown elsewhere; they are akin to what are called poltergeist phenomena in Europe. Scientists don’t say or think anything of such supernormal happenings except to pooh-pooh them or to prove that they are simply the tricks of children simulating supernatural manifestations.


Sri Aurobindo: It was only three or four stones that fell inside a room, the others were thrown from outside and in the last period banged day after day against the closed door of Bijoy Nag who was sheltering inside the servant boy who became the centre of the phenomena. As the boy got wounded by two of the last stones, we sent him away to another house with the idea that then the phenomena would cease and it so happened.  As a rule these things need certain conditions to happen — e.g. a house which becomes the ﬁeld of the action of these supernormal forces and a person (usually psychologically ill-developed) who is very often their victim as well as their centre. If the person is removed elsewhere, the phenomena often stop but sometimes his aura is so strong for these things that the house aura is not needed — they continue wherever he or she goes. As for the other necessary factor it is supposed to be elemental beings who are the agents.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes they act on their own account, sometimes they are controlled and used by a person with occult powers. It was supposed here that some magic must have been used — such magic is common in the Tamil country and indeed in all South India. The stones were material enough, a huge heap of them were collected and remained at the staircase bottom for two or three days, so they were not thoughts taking a brick form.  It was evidently a case of materialisation probably preceded by a previous dematerialisation and “transport” — the bricks became ﬁrst visible in their ﬂight at a few feet from the place where they fell.  Scientiﬁc laws only give a schematic account of material processes of Nature — as a valid scheme they can be used for reproducing or extending at will a material process, but obviously they cannot give an account of the thing itself.


Sri Aurobindo: Water for instance is not merely so much oxygen and hydrogen put together — the combination is simply a process or device for enabling the materialisation of a new thing called water; what that new thing really is is quite another matter. In fact there are different planes of substance, gross, subtle and more subtle going back to what is called causal () substance. What is more gross can be reduced to the subtle state and the subtle brought into the gross state; that accounts for dematerialisation and materialisation and rematerialisation. These are occult processes and are vulgarly regarded as magic. Ordinarily the magician knows nothing of the why and wherefore of what he is doing, he has simply learned the formula or process or else controls elemental beings of the subtler states (planes or worlds) who do the thing for him.


Sri Aurobindo: The Tibetans indulge widely in occult processes; if you see the books of Madame David-Neel who has lived in Tibet you will get an idea of their expertness in these things. But also the Tibetan Lamas know something of the laws of occult (mental and vital) energy and how it can be made to act on physical things. That is something which goes beyond mere magic. The direct power of mind-force or life-force upon matter can be extended to an almost illimitable degree — but that has nothing to do with the stone-throwing affair which is of a lower and more external order.


Sri Aurobindo: In your (2) and (3) different operations seem to be confused together, (1) the creation of mere (subtle) images which the one who sees may mistake for real things, (2) the temporary materialisation of subtle substance into forms capable of cognition not only by the sight but by material touch or other sense, (3) the handling of material objects by mind-energy or vital force, e.g. making a pencil move and write on paper. All these things are possible and have been done. It must be remembered that Energy is fundamentally one in all the planes, only taking more and more dense forms, so there is nothing impossible in mind-energy or life-energy acting directly on material energy and substance; if they do they can make a material object do things or rather can do things with a material object which would be to that object in its ordinary poise or “law” unhabitual and therefore apparently impossible.  I do not see how cosmic rays can explain the origination of matter; it is like Sir Oliver Lodge’s explanation of life on earth that it comes from another planet; it only pushes the problem one step farther back — for how do the cosmic rays come into existence? But it is a fact that Agni is the basis of forms as the Sankhya pointed out long ago, i.e. the ﬁery principle in its three powers radiant, electric and gaseous (the Vedic trinity of Agni) is the agent in producing liquid and solid forms of what is called matter.


Sri Aurobindo: Obviously a layman can’t do these things, unless he has a native “psychic” (that is, occult) faculty and even then he will have to learn the law of the thing before he can use it at will. It is always possible to use spiritual force or mind-power or will-power or a certain kind of vital energy to produce effects in men, things and happenings; but knowledge and much practice is needed before this possibility ceases to be occasional and haphazard and can be used quite consciously, at will or to perfection. Even then to have “a control over the whole material world” is too big a proposition; a local and partial control is more possible or, more widely, certain kinds of control over matter.   I gave this as one instance of actual occult experience and action in accordance with occult law and practice, showing that these things are not imaginations or delusions or humbug, but can be true phenomena. The stone-throwing began unobtrusively with a few stones thrown at the Guest House kitchen — apparently from the terrace opposite, but there was no one there.


Sri Aurobindo: The phenomenon began before the fall of dusk and continued at ﬁrst for half an hour, but daily it increased in frequency, violence and the size of the stones and the duration of the attack till it lasted for several hours until it towards the end became in the hour or half hour before midnight a regular bombardment. It was no longer at the kitchen only, but thrown too in other places, e.g. the outer verandah. At ﬁrst we took it for a human-made affair and sent for the police, but the investigation lasted only for a very short time; when one of the constables in the verandah got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his legs, the police abandoned the case in a panic. We made our own investigations, but the places whence the stones seemed to be or might be coming were void of human stone-throwers. Finally, as if to put us kindly out of doubt, the stones began falling in closed rooms; one huge one (I saw it immediately after it fell) reposed ﬂat and comfortable on a cane table as if that was its proper place.


Sri Aurobindo: To wind up, they became murderous. The stones had hitherto been harmless in result except for a daily battering of Bijoy’s door which (in the last days) I had watched for half an hour the night before the end. They appeared in mid-air a few feet above the ground, not coming from a distance but suddenly manifesting, and from the direction from which they ﬂew, should have been thrown close in from the compound of the Guest House or the verandah itself, but the whole place was in a clear light and I saw that there was no human being there and could not have been. At last the semiidiot boy-servant who seemed to be the centre of the attack and was sheltered in Bijoy’s room under Bijoy’s protection began to be severely hit and was bleeding from a wound by stones thrown from inside the closed room. I went in at Bijoy’s call and saw the last stone fall on the boy; Bijoy and he were sitting side by side and the stone was thrown at them from in front, but there was no one visible to throw it — the two were alone in the room.


Sri Aurobindo: So unless it was Wells’s invisible man — ! We had been only watching or sometimes scouting around till then, but this was a little too much, it was becoming dangerous, and something had to be done. The Mother from her knowledge of the process of these things decided that the process here must depend on a nexus between the boy-servant and the house and if the nexus were broken, the servant and the house separated, the stone-throwing would cease. We sent him away to Hrishikesh’s place and immediately the whole phenomenon ceased; not a single stone was thrown after that, peace reigned.


Sri Aurobindo: That shows that these occult phenomena are real, have a law or process, as deﬁnite as that of any scientiﬁc operation and a knowledge of these processes can not only bring them about but put an end to or annul or dissolve them.  That is usual. I was in that way unconscious of the body for many years.  The chest action is rather curious, because it is the vital mind that is there and the Romans always spoke of the mind as if it were in the heart. But memory and reading would rather be in the physical mind.


Sri Aurobindo: But anyhow the brain is a conveying instrument for all these activities and can feel the strain if there is any. The best relief for the brain is when the thinking takes place outside the body and above the head (or in space or at other levels but still outside the body). At any rate it was so in my case; for as soon as that happened there was an immense relief; I have felt body strain since then but never any kind of brain-fatigue. I have heard the same thing from others.  It is not usual to use the word Guru in the supramental yoga, here everything comes from the Divine himself.


Sri Aurobindo: But if anybody wants it he can use it for the time being.   The relation of Guru and disciple is only one of many relations which one can have with the Divine, and in this Yoga which aims at a supramental realisation, it is not usual to give it this name; rather, the Divine is regarded as the Source, the living Sun of Light and Knowledge and Consciousness and spiritual realisation and all that one receives is felt as coming from there and the whole being remoulded by the Divine Hand. This is a greater and more intimate relation than that of the human Guru and disciple, which is more of a limited mental ideal.  Nevertheless, if the mind still needs the more familiar mental conception, it can be kept so long as it is needed; only do not let the soul be bound by it and do not let it limit the inﬂow of other relations with the Divine and larger forms of experience.


Sri Aurobindo:   They cannot get beyond unless they lose it. Even in these planes it prevents them from getting the full consciousness and knowledge. For in the Overmind cosmic consciousness too ego is absent, though the true Person may be there.


Sri Aurobindo: No. In surrendering to the Guru, it is to the Divine in him that one surrenders — if it were only to a human entity it would be ineffective. But it is the consciousness of the Divine Presence that makes the Guru a real Guru, so that even if the disciple surrenders to him thinking of the human being to whom he surrenders, that Presence would still make it effective.  Yes — because only the static part would be free in formlessness, the active Nature would be still in the play of the gunas. Many think they are free from the ego because they get the sense of the formless Existence, they do not see that the egoistic element remains in their action just as before.


Sri Aurobindo: It is more dynamic.  Because through it you surrender not only to the impersonal but to the personal, not only to the Divine in yourself but to the Divine outside you; you get a chance for the surpassing of ego not only by retreat into the Self where ego does not exist, but in the personal nature where it is the ruler. It is the sign of the will to complete surrender to the total Divine, ,. Of course it must be a genuine spiritual surrender for all this to be true.  What is harmful is to surrender to something in yourself which ﬂatters your ego and which you call the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: It is that which makes you a puppet in the hands of Forces.  As for the letter, I suppose you will have to tell the writer that his father committed a mistake when he took up Yoga without a Guru — for the mental idea about a Guru cannot take the place of the actual living inﬂuence. This Yoga especially, as I have written in my books, needs the help of the Guru and cannot be done without it. The condition into which his father got was a breakdown, not a state of siddhi. He passed out of the normal mental consciousness into a contact with some intermediate zone of consciousness (not the spiritual) where one can be subjected to all sorts of voices, suggestions, ideas, so-called aspirations which are not genuine.


Sri Aurobindo: I have warned against the dangers of this intermediate zone in one of my books. The sadhak can avoid entering into this zone — if he enters, he has to look with indifference on all these things and observe them without lending any credence, by so doing he can safely pass into the true spiritual light. If he takes them all as true or real without discrimination, he is likely to land himself in a great mental confusion and, if there is in addition a lesion or weakness of the brain — the latter is quite possible in one who has been subject to apoplexy — it may have serious consequences and even lead to a disturbance of the reason. If there is ambition, or other motive of the kind mixed up in the spiritual seeking, it may lead to a fall in the Yoga and the growth of an exaggerated egoism or megalomania — of this there are several symptoms in the utterances of his father during the crisis. In fact one cannot or ought not to plunge into the experiences of this sadhana without a fairly long period of preparation and puriﬁcation (unless one has already a great spiritual strength and elevation).


Sri Aurobindo: Sri Aurobindo himself does not care to accept many into his path and rejects many more than he accepts. It would be well if he can get his father to pursue the sadhana no farther — for what he is doing is not really Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga but something he has constructed in his own mind and once there has been an upset of this kind the wisest course is discontinuance.   Krishnaprem’s objection to Grace would be valid if the religionists mattered, but in spiritual things they don’t. Their action naturally is to make a formula and dry shell of everything, not Grace alone.


Sri Aurobindo: Even “Awake, Arise” leads to the swelled head or the formula — can’t be avoided when Mr. Everyman deals with things divine. I had the same kind of violent objection to Gurugiri, but you see I was obliged by the irony of things or rather by the inexorable truth behind them to become a Guru and preach the Guruvada. Such is Fate.  About the question of the Avatar, I do not think it is useful to press in the matter. It has become very much the tendency, especially in Bengal, to regard the Guru as the Avatar.


Sri Aurobindo: To every disciple the Guru is the Divine, but in a special sense — for the Guru is supposed to live in the divine consciousness, to have attained union and when he gives to the disciple, it is the Divine that gives and what he gives is the consciousness of the Divine who is within the Guru. But that and Avatarhood are two different things. It is mostly in East Bengal recently that those have come who were acclaimed as Avatars; those who came had each of them the idea of a work to be done for the world and the sense of a Divine Power working through them, which shows that there was a pressure for manifestation there and something came in each case, for something of the Divine Power always comes when it is called, but it does not look as if there was anywhere the complete descent. It is this that may have created the idea that the Avatar was born there. It has always been said of the Advent that is to come now that there would be many in whom it would seem that it had come, but the real Avatar would work behind a veil until the destined hour came.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not gather from what is quoted as said by your Guru that he claimed to be the Avatar. It seems to me that he claimed to be a Power preparing the way for the work of the Divine Mother and even to indicate that all that he meant would be manifested not only by his own followers but by other groups (), consisting evidently of those who had not had him for Guru but had some other Head and Teacher. This is also conﬁrmed by the saying that some other one than his disciples might be the means of his  — that is to say, would be the means of carrying on his work and aiding the manifestation of the Mother. If this meant proclaiming him as the Avatar, I do not see how it can agree with the other saying that after his leaving his body the Avatar would come to the Asram he had created.  I do not quite know what is meant by An incarnation is always through a human mother, though there have been one or two cases in which a virgin birth has been proclaimed (Christ, Buddha).


Sri Aurobindo: The only other meaning — unless we suppose an unprecedented miracle — might be a descent such as sometimes happens, the Godhead manifesting in somebody who at birth was a Vibhuti, not at once the full incarnation.  But in the absence of a clear statement from your Guru himself, these are only speculations.  I have written this much as an answer to your question, but I doubt whether it is necessary or advisable to write anything of it to your friends. They have their own feeling about the matter; it seems to me better not to challenge or disturb it.   It is a modern Asram, that’s why!


Sri Aurobindo: The objection is founded on human three-dimensional ideas of Space and division in spaces, which are again founded upon the limited nature of the human senses. To some beings space is one-dimensional, to others two-dimensional, to others threedimensional — but there are other dimensions also. It is well recognised in metaphysics that the Inﬁnite can be in a point and not only in extension of space — just as there is an eternity of extension in Time but also an Eternity which is independent of Time so that it can be felt in the moment — one has not to think of millions and millions of years in order to realise it. So too the rigid distinction of One against Many, a One that cannot be many or of an All that is made up by addition and not selfexistent are crude mental notions of the outer ﬁnite mind that cannot be applied to the Inﬁnite. If the All were of this material and unspiritual character, tied down to a primary arithmetic and geometry, the realisation of the universe in oneself, of the all in each and each in all, of the universe in the Bindu would be impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: Your Arya Samajists are evidently innocent of the elements of metaphysical thinking or they would not make such objections.     Do you imagine that the Divine is at any time not everywhere in the universe or beyond it? or that he is living at one point in space and governing the rest from it, as Mussolini governs the Italian Empire from Rome?