Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1306

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 9, 1935

The Divine writing, not the Divine Love, has made me a little peaceful. But the way you are hammering the “Supramental” on us in everything, in every problem, in every difficulty, as the solution to all riddles, panacea to all ills, one almost thinks that its descent will make all of us “big people” overnight... Without it, there is absolutely no chance of any achievement, it seems!

My insistence on the supramental is of course apo-diaskeptic. Don’t search for the word in the dictionary. I am simply imitating the doctors who when they are in a hole protect themselves with impossible Greek. Peace, supramental if possible, but peace anyhow – a peace which will become supramental if it has a chance. The atmosphere is most confoundedly disturbed, that is why I am ingeminating “peace, peace, peace!” like a summer dove or an intellectual under the rule of Hitler. Of course, I am not asking you to become supramental offhand. That is my business, and I will do it if you fellows give me a chance, which you are not doing just now (you is not personal, but collective and indefinite) and will do less if you go blummering into buzzific intensities. (Please don’t consult the dictionary, but look into the writings of Joyce and others).

You say that peace is absolutely necessary for bringing down Love, Knowledge, etc.,– but don’t you think purity is also required? And if peace and purity are to be established, a complete opening of the inner being is essential, and the bringing forward of the psychic. This will naturally take years – so we have to go on starving for Love and Knowledge and other things divine.

That is logical and orthodox; but the supramental, once it is down (O lingering once!) is supposed to bring these things up generally and induce an aeroplanic tendency to accurate swiftness in all who are on the road to it.

Can’t they visit us now and then, and keep us going?

They can if you keep the doors open.

And if you have to wait for absolute purity of nature before the Supramental can come down, I should say that you will have to go on waiting and waiting!

Whose nature? It is I who have to bring it down. Do you mean to insinuate that I am impure? Sir, I raise my blameless head in dignified remonstrance.

Can’t it accept the conditions and come down and alter them? In The Synthesis of Yoga, in Chapter VI, you seem to say that after the descent those which don’t change have to disappear.

“Those”? what “those”? (I can’t be referring to my own blessed writings all the time, so I don’t know what you mean or what I meant either). And in whom?

By the way, I have to complain about the lack of some essential instruments. Since a general practitioner has to be ready for all “blessed conditions” and cure them, many apparatus are necessary...

You can consult Pavitra. Mother has already spoken to him about ordering instruments from France – here they are too costly, many of them.