Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
5. On Three Works of the Mother
Fragment ID: 20218
(this fragment is largest or earliest found passage)
Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee
June 12, 1936
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If, as you say, there has been a “change for the worse” due to the descent of the vital world, would it not make the 
supramental descent in the earth-consciousness impossible or postpone its coming to some distant future instead of here and now? Moreover, the “possessed” nations are endowed with all the possible material power, making it difficult for any movement of peace to be successful. Except for their egoistic plans, nothing will be allowed to succeed.
The vital descent cannot prevent the supramental – still less can the possessed nations do it by their material power, since the supramental descent is primarily a spiritual fact which will bear its necessary outward consequences. What previous vital descents have done is to falsify the Light that came down as in the history of Christianity where it took possession of the teaching and distorted
it and deprived it of any widespread fulfilment. But the supermind is by definition a Light that cannot be distorted if it acts
in its own right and by its own presence. It is only when it holds itself back and allows inferior Powers of consciousness to use a diminished and already deflected Truth that the knowledge can be seized by the vital Forces and made to serve their own purpose.
12 June 1936
1 SABCL, volume 22: diluted
2 SABCL, volume 22: comes
Current publication:
[Largest or earliest found passage: ] Sri Aurobindo. The Mother with the Letters on the Mother // The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Set of 37 Volumes (CWSA).- Volume 32. (≈ 25 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2012.- 662 p.
Other publications: