Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 20982

The Higher Mind is the first plane where one becomes aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees things through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight – not illumined by any of the intense or upper lights but as in a large strong and clear daylight. The poetic intelligence is quite different; it is the mind and its vision moving on the wings of imagination akin to the intellect proper but lifted above it. The Higher Mind is a spiritual plane, this is not. But the larger philosophic and the larger poetic intelligence are nearer to it than the ordinary intellect and may receive its influence. When Milton starts his poem

Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree –

he is evidently writing from the poetic intelligence. There is nothing of the Higher Mind knowledge or vision either in the substance or style. But there is a largeness of rhythm and sweep of the language which has a certain kinship to the manner natural to what is above. Naturally, something from the higher planes can come into the poetry whose medium is the poetic intelligence and uplift it. That happens in such lines as

Those thoughts that wander through eternity.

This applies to most of the classical poets – classical poetry is fundamentally a poetry of the poetic intelligence. But it may be suffused and modified by Other influences – generally through some infiltration from the inner Mind which communicates some tinge of a higher afflatus to the poetic intelligence, sometimes through a direct uplifting.

Of course you must understand that the greatness Of the poetry as poetry does not necessarily depend on the level from which it is written. Shelley has more access to the inner Mind and through it to greater things than Milton, but he is not the greater poet.