Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

Fragment ID: 20897

The question was if certain perfections must not be demanded of the Divine Manifestation which seemed to me quite irrelevant to the reality. I put forward two propositions which appear to me indispensable; unless we are to reverse all spiritual knowledge in favour of modern European ideas about things: first, the Divine Manifestation, even when it manifests in mental and human ways, has behind it a consciousness greater than the mind and not bound by the petty mental and moral conventions of this very ignorant human race – so that to impose these standards on the Divine is to try to do what is irrational and impossible.

Secondly, this Divine Consciousness behind the apparent personality is concerned with only two things in a fundamental way – the truth above and here below the Lila and the purpose of the incarnation or manifestation, and it does what is necessary for that in the way its greater than human consciousness sees to be the necessary and intended way. But I do not understand how all that can prevent me from answering mental questions. On my own showing, if it is necessary for the divine purpose, it has to be done. Sri Ramakrishna himself answered thousands of questions, I believe. But the answers must be such as he gave and such as I try to give, answers from a higher spiritual experience, from a deeper source of knowledge and not lucubrations of the logical intellect trying to co-ordinate its ignorance. Still less can there be a placing of a divine truth before the judgments of the intellect to be condemned or acquitted by that authority – for the authority here has no sufficient jurisdiction or competence. ...