otherwise the things you write or experienced formerly would be meaningless. Parts of the mind which are uppermost now may not want, but that is so with most people.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1936
Letter ID: 1670
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
July 6, 1936 (Evening)
... You say I should deal with it consciously and directly. But how?
I meant that you should fight it out.
... You say it is all D. In everything I do, you find D.
Because you say just the same things.
I didn’t know at all that he has got it afresh – this idea of going away – perhaps over J’s novel affair?
No, the reason he gives is just the same as yours...
But if you head for the Pacific, well, I suppose I have to be swayed and billowed into the Atlantic, at whatever cost! You write, “If you want the Divine...” That is the whole question. Do I really want the Divine? Have I come for Him?
I intended to write “If something in you wants the Divine,” but dropped into the shorter form. Something must have wanted it, otherwise the things you write or experienced formerly would be meaningless. Parts of the mind which are uppermost now may not want, but that is so with most people.
It is not so much the retention of my book that gave me that idea. From your short answers and from a wrong intuition perhaps.
Short answers were due to the same cause.
But if you want to keep me here, do save me from this condition – no peace, no strength to fight, etc. Unless you save ‘me unconditionally, I am doomed.
Quite ready.
Shivalingam has again had pain in the right ankle for the last 6 or 7 days. Thinking of trying Sod. Salicyl. injection; if that fails, then protein injection.
[No reply.]
Mahatma Gandhi says in an article: “... I hold that complete realisation is impossible in this embodied life. Nor is it necessary. A living immovable faith is all that is required for reaching the full spiritual height attainable by human beings...” Your opinion on the matter?
I do not know what Mahatma Gandhi means by complete realisation. If he means a realisation with nothing more to realise, no farther development possible, then I agree – I have myself spoken of farther divine progression, an infinite development. But the question is not that; the question is whether the Ignorance can be transcended, whether a complete essential realisation turning the consciousness from darkness to light, from an instrument of the Ignorance seeking for Knowledge into an instrument or rather a manifestation of Knowledge proceeding to greater Knowledge, Light enlarging, heightening into greater Light, is or is not possible. My view is that this conversion is not only possible, but inevitable in the spiritual evolution of the being here. The embodiment of life 
has nothing to do with it. This embodiment is not of life, but of consciousness and its energy of which life is only one phase or force. As life has developed mind, and the embodiment has modified itself to suit this development (mind is precisely the main instrument of ignorance seeking for knowledge); so mind can develop Supermind which is in its nature knowledge not seeking for itself, but manifesting itself by its own automatic power, and the embodiment can again modify itself or be modified from above so as to suit this development. Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise there will be no longer any need of the gleam. The supramental knowledge supports itself, it does not need to be supported by faith; it lives by its own certitude. You may say that farther progression, farther development will need faith. No, for the farther development will proceed on a basis of knowledge, not of Ignorance. We shall walk in the light of knowledge towards its own wider vistas of self-fulfilment.
Current publication:
[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo; Nirodbaran Talukdar. Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo: The Complete Set [in 2 volumes].- 2nd ed., 3d inpression.- Volume 2.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2001.- pp. i-vii, 603-1221.- ISBN 81-7058-020-X
Other publications: