Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
I am glad you have told me what the thoughts are that are passing through your mind; but I am hardly prepared to accept the general facts alleged by you as an abdication or as defeats of the Divine. I am ready to regard them as defeats of Inge and Tagore and Russell and Huxley and Rolland and old-world Islam; but I never expected – outside their special province – any of these people or causes to conquer. As for Biren and Maya,– well, for Biren, I told him practically (it was no doubt a long time ago), that the time had not come for him to come here, and even now according to his own admission in one of his recent letters to the Mother he is still divided and that means that he is not yet ready. It is also clear that Maya is not yet free inwardly from the hold of Shankar – so! It is quite possible for the Divine to have defeats – the Bhagawat Purana even enumerates running away from battle, palāyanamani, as one of the usual incidents in the life of the Avatar; only there is usually a method or at least a meaning in his flight, and what matters is the future and not the difficulties of the present. As for Gandhi, why should you suppose that I am so tender for the faith of the Mahatma? I do not call it faith at all, but a rigid mental belief, and what he terms soul-force is only a strong vital will which has taken a religious turn. That, of course, can have tremendous force for action, but unfortunately Gandhi spoils it by his ambition to be a man of reason, while in fact he has no reason in him at all, never was reasonable at any moment in his life and, I suppose, never will be. What he has in its place is a remarkable type of unintentionally sophistic logic. Well, what this reason, this amazingly precisely unreliable logic brings about is that nobody is even sure and, I don’t think, he is himself really sure what he will do next. He has not only two minds, but three or four minds, and all depends on which will turn up topmost at a particular moment and how it will combine with the others. There would be no harm in 
that, on the contrary there might be an advantage if there were a central Light somewhere choosing for him and shaping the decision to the need of the action. He thinks there is and calls it God – but it has always seemed to me that it is his own mind that decides and most often decides wrongly. Anyhow I cannot imagine Lenin or Mustapha Kemal not knowing their own minds or acting in this way – even their strategic retracts were steps towards an end clearly conceived and executed. But whatever it be it is all mind action and vital force in Gandhi. So why should he be taken as an example of the defeat of the Divine or of a spiritual Power? I quite allow that there has been something behind Gandhi greater than himself and you can call it the Divine or a Cosmic Force which has used him, but then there is that behind everybody who is used as an instrument for world ends,– behind Kemal and Lenin also; so that is not germane to the matter.
Of course I shall try to write about this matter of the Divine and Power – only, you want me to answer to the mind and, if so, we must know on what ground to stand. There is a vital mind which judges all things by its own hopes and despairs, preferences, expectations, feelings and makes its conclusions according as these are satisfied or dissatisfied – and there is the true reason, the thinking or scientific mind that takes its ground carefully and tries to see clearly and judge. It is to the latter that an answer can be attempted, for the former accepts only its own answer. There must be more clear understanding as to what we mean by the Divine, or by Power or by the spiritual Power, if it exists – and also what this Divine Power is supposed to do and under what conditions, the world being what it is, it is to be expected to work. So it is not a simple task to give a clear and full answer!