Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 611
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
August 23, 1935
I can’t resist the temptation of sending you the enclosed. The reviewer I know not. So I am glad he is so laudatory – though his language is rather pompous.
I have been typing your letter written to me this morning, and pondering and pondering. I trust I have grown wiser, believe me, not less so by the irony in your letter on us mentals. But que voulez-vous, you have expressed 
yourself, willy-nilly, in the language which the mental has invented after all. So you are also in no less a fix than I. The only difference between you and us seems to be the difference between a Jivanmukta1 who accepts the “fixes” voluntarily while the baddhas (bound) are crushed in the “fixes” toils. But anyhow it is refreshing to see that a Jivanmukta can accept bonds which he transcends.
Why should I be in a fix for that? I use the language of the mind because there is no other which human beings can understand – even though most of them understand it badly. If I were to use a supramental language like Joyce, you would not even have the illusion of understanding; so, not being an Irishman, I don’t make the attempt. But of course anyone who wants to change earth-nature must first accept it in order to change it. To quote from an unpublished poem2 of my own:
“He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.”
As to the supramental language however the review you sent me stirs in me wild hopes. “Angelic heights throbbing with the spirit of the [vettling wingerin?]” (magnificent! let Joyce beat that [vettling wingerin?], if he can!). Arguing with “devil don’t care dialectics”, “[?] [?] in the midst of theories controversed and knotty self-criticism,” “in spite of the bludgeon hits of dilettantism,” etc. etc. If I could write like that I might be able to explain the supramental to you and perhaps with the aid of some “indulgence in slow ruminations” punctuated with “chuckling witticism” here and there you might arrive at some raw inklings and uncooked understanding of the Supermind. But alas! such writing is beyond me.
1 “Silence, Light, Power, Ananda, these are the four pillars of the Jivanmukta consciousness,” is how Sri Aurobindo defines the term (see p. 65).
2 “A God’s Labour”.