Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1711

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

August 26, 1936

At last you have given me an occasion for a question; let it be an occasion for a big reply, what?

My dear sir, what is this extravagant ambition for bigness?

With fifty letters a day raining on me in a “non-correspondence” period, a supramental brevity is all of which I am capable.

You very often say “it is a meeting in the vital plane”. Yesterday you said “an activity of the vital plane” – what does it mean? Are all happenings there as true as on the physical plane?

Yes, except that sometimes the record is imperfect – but the happening is true.

Are they intimations of what would happen on the physical plane?

No – the vital plane has an independent life of its own; the physical also.

My being meets you or the Mother in dreams, and receives your blessings. Has it any concrete value – as concrete as the Pranam touch?

What do you mean by concrete? It is concrete there just as the Abyssinian or Spanish wars are concrete here.

Do you mean to say that people getting instructions from you in dreams is as real, effective and correct as if you had written them on paper?

Yes, if the record is correct.

If that be so, does Jatin’s meeting mean that his future work here will be engineering?

No, not necessarily.

Or does it mean that even there outside, he will be guided by the Mother?

He may be, if he develops the supraphysical contact.

I am apt to think somewhat slightingly of these vital plane meetings...

You are too physically matter of fact. Besides you are quite ignorant of occult things. The vital is part of what European psychologists sometimes call the subliminal, and the subliminal, as everybody ought to know, can do things the physical cannot do – e.g. solve a problem in a few minutes over which the physical has spent days in vain etc., etc.

When I dream that you are writing big answers or the Mother blessing me profusely, I see exactly the contrary in my book and at the Pranam. Any explanation?

What is the use of the same things happening on both planes? it would be superfluous and otiose. The vital plane is a field where things can be done which for some reason or other can’t be done now on the physical.

Please don’t write supramentally. If being supramental, you can’t write intelligibly, is there any earthly use of that?

Certainly. Your inner self will understand and rejoice while the outer stares and wobbles.

N.B. There are of course hundreds of varieties of things in the vital as it is a much richer and more plastic field of consciousness than the physical, and all are not of equal validity and value – I was speaking above of the things that are valid. By the way, without this vital plane there would be no art, poetry or literature – these things come through the vital before they can manifest here.