Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 4

Letter ID: 1073

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

February 2, 1950

It was not my intention¹ to question in any degree Chait-anya’s position as an Avatar of Krishna and the Divine Love. That character of the manifestation appears very clearly from all the accounts about him and even, if what is related about the appearance of Krishna in him from time to time is accepted, these outbursts of the splendour of the Divine Being are among the most remarkable in the story of the Avatar. As for Sri Ramakrishna, the manifestation in him was not so intense but more many-sided and fortunately there can be no doubt about the authenticity of details of his talk and actions since they have been recorded from day to day by so competent an observer as Mahendranath Gupta. I would not care to enter into any comparison as between these two great spiritual personalities; both exercised an extraordinary influence and did something supreme in their own sphere.

¹ Dilipda’s note: Sri Aurobindo writes in his Essays on the Gita in the Chapter entitled, “The Process of Avatarhood”

“But also the higher divine consciousness of the Purushottama may itself descend into the humanity and that of the Jiva disappear into it. This is said by his contemporaries to have happened in the occasional transfigurations of Chaitanya when he who in his normal consciousness was only the lover and devotee of the Lord and rejected all deification, became in these abnormal moments the Lord himself and so spoke and acted, with all the outflooding light and love and power of the divine Presence”

Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple in a letter dated November 13, 1936:

“He [Ramakrishnal never wrote an autobiography – what he said was in conversation with his disciples and others. He was certainly as much an Avatar as Christ or Chaitanya”

Back