Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
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Please forgive me for having to ask something about your philosophy. It is because I have been of late discussing a lot with Haridas about different aspects of your vision of our cosmic life and your new clues. I told him that I have the impression that you have either written to somebody or somewhere in the Synthesis that those who want like the Moksha-lovers, to be merged for ever in the Absolute, (the Non-being or the Transcendental) may do so with the result that they will achieve it, but that Nirvana is but a stage (I read this in a book on Tibetan
Buddhism too, fancy that!) and those who achieve it have to be reborn again to re-undertake the work of liberation postponed for a time. I mean that I somehow feel that you have written that even Moksha can be but a temporary sojourn of the soul, the ultimate aim and end of cosmos must be to attain bliss of the Divine through the attainment of Supermind or rather bringing it down as a leaven at first, finally to transform our terrestrial life. I have tried to picture it thus a little poetically maybe as my poem “Dream to Dream” today may show, but since I take it that I have your support in this view I would like to know how much truth there is in my interpretation. But, I repeat, I have a feeling that I have read it somewhere in your writings. Since, however, I can’t just now locate it, would it be too much to ask you to write just a few lines, especially as Haridas has been asking me to show him where you have said this. Or am I really mistaken in thinking that you have said this? Or is it partly true but partly wrong, the incorrectness deriving from wishful thinking?
I don’t think I have written, but I said once that souls which have passed into Nirvana may (not “must”) return to complete the larger upward curve. I have written somewhere, I think, that for this Yoga (it might also be added, in the natural complete order of the manifestation) the experience of Nirvana can only be a stage or passage to the complete realisation. 
I have said also that there are many doors by which one can pass into the realisation of the Absolute (Parabrahman) and Nirvana is one of them, but by no means the only one. You may remember Ramakrishna’s saying that the Jivakoti [a human being who, once immersed in God cannot return] can ascend the stairs, but not return, while the Ishwarakoti [a divine human being] can ascend and descend at will. If that is so the Jivakoti might be those who describe only the curve from Matter through Mind into the silent Brahman and the Ishwarakoti those who get the
integral Reality and can therefore combine the Ascent with the Descent and contain the “two ends” of existence in their single being.
Current publication:
[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- 1st ed.- In 4 Volumes.- Volume 4. 1938 – 1950 / edited by Shankar Bandopadhyay.- Pune: Heri Krishna Mandir Trust; Mysore: Mira Aditi, 2003.- 269 p.
Other publications:
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga // SABCL.- Volume 22. (≈ 28 vol. of CWSA).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.- 502 p.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga. II // CWSA.- Volume 29. (≈ 22-24 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2013.- 522 p.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters of Sri Aurobindo: In 4 Series.- Second Series [On Yoga].- Bombay: Sri Aurobindo Sircle, 1949.- 599 p.