Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 564
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
February 10, 1935
My reason for wanting you to get rid of the mental concepts is that they are rigid and keep you tied to the idea and feeling of your incapacity and the impossibility of the sadhana. Get rid of that and a great obstacle disappears.
You could then see that there is no reason for the constant sense of grief and despair that reacts upon your efforts and makes it sterile. I simply want you to put yourself, if it is possible, in that state of quietude and openness which is favourable to the higher consciousness and its action; if it is not possible at present, I have still said that I will do my utmost to help you to the experience. That does not mean that the utmost has been yet done or that it can be done in a few days. But (although people are not giving me the freedom of mind and disposal of time which I had asked for), it will be done.
I am glad you have got Tagore’s foreword, although – but one must not look a gift-horse in the mouth. I regret I can’t send 
you anything of the translation today. People seem to have chosen these days and especially this Sunday for pouring things on me in spite of the notice. I am doing everything today including the writing of this note in a great hurry and under much pressure.
I did not mean that anyone here could replace or equal myself and the Mother; much less the persons you name – or the actual Muthu equal the actual Ramakrishna. But certainly it is possible for X and Y and Z (I won’t repeat the names) to change, to throw off their present perversities or limitations and come nearer to us than they are now – if they have the sincere will and make the endeavour. I have explained my meaning to Nirod – so I do not repeat it here. Of course in my writing to Nirod, there is a certain note of persiflage and humorous insistence of which you must take account if you want to get the exact measure of my reasoning and its significance...1 [incomplete]
1 Here is what Sri Aurobindo wrote to Nirod: “The question was whether new faculties not at all manifested in the personality up to now in this life could appear, even suddenly appear, by force of Yoga. (...) What a wonderful argument! Since it has not been done, it cannot be done! At that rate the whole history of the earth must have stopped long before the protoplasm. When it was a mass of gases, no life had been born, ergo, life could not be born – when only life was there, mind was not born, so mind could not be born. Since mind is there but nothing beyond, as there is no Supermind manifested in anybody, so Supermind can never be born. Sobhanallah! Glory, glory, glory to the human reason! Luckily the Divine or the Cosmic Spirit or Nature or whoever is there cares a damn for the human reason. He or she or it does what he or she or it has to do, whether it can or cannot be done.”