Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 35
Fragment ID: 8629
Sadhana for the Earth Consciousness [10]
I have been pondering over your letter [pp. 346– 47]. I trust I have grown wiser, not less so as a result of the irony in your letter in regard to us mental beings. But you have expressed yourself, willy-nilly, in the language which the mental has invented after all. So you are in no less of a fix than I.
Why should I be in a fix for that? I use the language of the mind because there is no other which human beings can understand,– even though most of them understand it badly. If I were to use a supramental language like Joyce, you would not even have the illusion of understanding it; so, not being an Irishman, I don’t make the attempt. But of course anyone who wants to change earth-nature must first accept it in order to change it. To quote from an unpublished poem of my own:
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.1
23 August 1935
1 Lines from “A God’s Labour”, in Collected Poems, volume 2 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, p. 534. – Ed.