Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1935
Letter ID: 1310
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
April 15, 1935
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I had a dream last night: I had gone for Pranam, saw that Mother was in a playful mood with me. She took a flower, gave it and took it back. Then she took another flower and did the same thing. It was “Power over sex-centre”. I don’t remember whether ultimately she gave it or not. But why this hesitation?
The playing in that way simply means a gradual working. The offering of the flower indicates a play of the force e.g. in the sex-centre. The taking of the flower away means that the sex-centre is not yet ready – but the play of the flower is not without effect, i.e. something has been done to prepare the centre.
I don’t know how to take this “bloom into a superman”, except as a great sarcastic joke – striking me with my own rod, so to say. Have you not so often silenced and ridiculed my easy and lazy reliance on you to open up everything as the opening of a flower, by repeated examples of yourself, your plodding, your labour, your tapasya?...
It is a joke and not a joke. One must rely on the Divine and yet do some enabling sadhana – the Divine gives the fruits not by the measure of the sadhana but by the measure of the soul and its aspiration. Also worrying does no good – I shall be this, I shall be that, what shall I be? Say “I am ready to be not what I want, but what the Divine wants me to be” – all the rest should go on that base.
Your “superman” reminds me of an interesting argument I had with K. He contended that our aspiring for the Supermind was not something sober – that we should aspire for the Divine realisation only.
By Divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation – the realisation of Self, Bhagawan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual or
else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the 
mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual. So far your opponent is right.
K said that one must see what one is aspiring for. With the movements and consciousness externalised, where is the sense of such an aspiration for the Supermind?
It is true that neither can be got in an
effective way unless the whole being is turned towards it – unless there is a real and very serious spirit and dynamic reality of sadhana. So far you are right and the opponent also is right.
I told him that it was you who wanted the Supermind for the earth, not we.
I don’t see what is wrong in my aspiring for the Supermind in spite of knowing all my weaknesses. The Divine Grace is there on which we rely at every moment, and if the central sincerity is there, there is nothing wrong, I think, in entertaining such an aspiration.
It is true that I want the supramental not for myself but for the earth and souls born on the earth, and certainly therefore I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental. But these
are the conditions. He must want the Divine Will first and the soul’s surrender and the spiritual
realisation (through works, bhakti, knowledge, self-perfection) on the way. So there everybody is right.
The central sincerity is the first thing and sufficient for an aspiration to be entertained,– a total sincerity is needed for the aspiration to be fulfilled. Amen!
1 CWSA, volume 29; SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: plane or
2 CWSA, volumes 29, 35: any
3 CWSA, volumes 29, 35; SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: there
4 SABCL, volume 22; CWSA, volume 29; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: and spiritual
Current publication:
[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo; Nirodbaran Talukdar. Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo: The Complete Set [in 2 volumes].- 2nd ed., 3d inpression.- Volume 1.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2001.- 602 p.
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