Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 563
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
February 10, 1935
(...) these mental conceptions – since all such conceptions are suspect from your Supramental vision. But do you seriously want me to swallow this mountainous absurdity that any man can be made a Krishna or a Sri Aurobindo, any woman a Mother, any Venkataraman a Tyagaraj, any Harin a Tansen, any Manodhar1 a Shakespeare, any Sita2 a Raphael, any Radhananda3 a Vyas or Valmiki. You really want me to swallow this [even?] if I suffocate? If you do I will try to but then you mustn’t blame me if I do suffocate in the end. Agreed? For your logical proposition “Everything is possible” reduces all human experience to look so hopeless, so childish, and so frightening for a poor – Dilip – who finds it so difficult to believe that any amount of Divine Grace will make a 
Haradhan4 into a Sri Aurobindo or a Rani5 into a Sri Mira. Is it for this preconception that the Divine Grace will shun me like one past all hope? I am not joking. I mean it. All mental conceptions must go! This too? It is urged, thanks to your logic, that with the Supramental descent every sadhak here will become greater than Krishna since Krishna was – pooh-pooh, an Overmental pigmy god compared with what supramentalized Haradhan will be. Logic irrefutable. But – O tears! flow! flow!
I have never said any of all these things. These egoistic terms are not those in which I think – any more than these egoistic ambitions even are those in which my vital moves. It is a higher Truth I seek, whether it makes men greater or not is not the question but whether it will give them truth and peace and light to live in and make life something better than a struggle with ignorance and falsehood and pain and strife. Then even if they are less great than the men of the past, my object would have been achieved. For me mental conceptions cannot be the end of all things. I know that the supermind is a truth.
You do not seem to have followed the sense of my reasoning very well – perhaps because I clothe my arguments with Nirod in a tone of humour. You have taken my humorous comment about Muthu with a particular seriousness – if you really are not joking: but I suppose you are in spite of your disclaimer.
It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth consciousness. I see it above and know what it is – I feel it overseeing my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness 
there to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should not follow my Truth-sense and Truth-vision. If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care. There is no question of Haradhan or Rani or anybody else in that. It is a question between the Divine and myself – whether it is the Divine will or not, whether I am sent to bring that down or open the way for its descent or at least make it more possible or not. Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption – I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others.
(This is not to be circulated.)
1 Manodhar: a Bengali sadhak, the Ashram’s barber.
2 Sita: Harin’s companion.
3 Radhananda or Shuddhananda Bharati was born in 1893 in Tamil Nadu. He studied Tamil literature in-depth and soon flowered into a poet and composer. He lived in the Ashram for over a decade, during which he observed silence and lived on uncooked food. He also learnt French and translated many works into Tamil.
4 Haradhan hailed from Chandernagore. He was a soldier in World War I and settled in the Ashram in December 1930.
5 Rani was Bejoy Nag’s wife. She was a very sweet and quiet person.