Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Yoga

2. Integral Yoga and Other Paths

Fragment ID: 140

See largest or earliest found fragment here

Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee

July 10, 1937

It is quite possible that the śloka² refers to a going up into higher worlds of felicity and light and this can be called a liberation or release. In later times the idea was strong that from all these higher worlds return is inevitable and it is only the release from all cosmic existence that gives mukti. The Vedic Rishis seem to have looked to an ascent into a luminous world or state above the falsehood and ignorance. In the Upanishad the sun is the symbol of the supramental Truth and it is said that those who pass into it may return but those who pass through the gates of the sun itself do not; possibly this means that an ascent into the supermind itself above the golden lid of overmind was the definitive liberation. The Veda speaks of the Truth hidden by a Truth where the Sun looses his horses from his car and there all the myriad rays are drawn together into one and that was considered the goal. The Isha Upanishad also speaks of the golden lid hiding the face of the Truth by removing which the Law of the Truth is seen, and the highest knowledge in which the one Purusha is known (so’hamasmi) is described as the “kalyāṇatama” form of the Sun. All this seems to refer to the supramental states of which the Sun is the symbol.